[FFmpeg-devel] Filtering clueless-user spam from the lists

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 04:22:21PM +0100, Nico Sabbi wrote:
> Il Wednesday 23 January 2008 16:16:12 Michael Niedermayer ha scritto:
> > >
> > > yet facts prove otherwise: just read the ML and the headers
> > > of all broken mails. You won't be surprised to see outlook
> > > in every user-agent header.
> >
> > uhm thats a scary form of reasoning you use here ...
> >
> > its like saying, look at all cancer patients, they all came in
> > contact with dihydrogen monoxid before getting cancer, or
> > look at acid rain, it contains hydroxylic acid
> > then then suggest to ban these chemmicals
> 
> Like Guillaume's even your answer is out of proportions
> 
> >
> > the fallacy of your reasoning is
> > All bad ones contain X thus X is bad and should be banned
> 
> >
> > correct would be
> > how often does X do bad things? or
> > how many mails from outlook are broken and how many not?
> >
> > [...]
> 
> 
> and if they turned out to be > 2/3 ?

i just looked at the mails of ffmpeg-dev (not all just the last 1 or 2 years)
and heres a list of user-agent and X-mailer headers from all thread hijackers
that is without a 're:' and 'in-reply-to:'

      1 User-Agent: Beam 1.1
      3 User-Agent: Icedove 1.5.0.12 (X11/20070606)
      7 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5
      1 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6
      1 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7
      1 User-Agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 (X11/20070828)
      3 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11)
      2 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09)
      3 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-11)
      1 User-Agent: mutt-ng/devel-r804 (Debian)
      2 User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.9a
      2 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221)
      2 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070306)
      2 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070307)
      2 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070314)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070403)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Windows/20070509)
      5 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (X11/20070604)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.13 (Windows/20070809)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.14pre (X11/20071022)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.14pre (X11/20071023)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20061008)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (Windows/20061207)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20070104)
      1 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20071022)
      2 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031)
      1 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
      2 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3)
      2 X-Mailer: Coremail Webmail Server Version XTx build 071102(4182.1364.1347)
      1 X-Mailer: Coremail Webmail Server Version XTx build 071114(4287.1413.1411)
      1 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.6.3 
      1 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.8.2 
     31 X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.5.0.2.293.g102a0-dirty
      1 X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.5.1.109.g4332
     20 X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.5.2.2
      8 X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.5.3.rc2.19.gc4fba
      1 X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 6.0.3 September 26, 2003
      9 X-Mailer: MessagingEngine.com Webmail Interface
      1 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11
      2 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0
      3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
      2 X-Mailer: mPOP Web-Mail 2.19
      1 X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.3.0beta5 (GTK+ 2.10.12; i486-pc-linux-gnu)
      1 X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.3.0beta5 (GTK+ 2.8.18; i486-pc-linux-gnu)
      4 X-Mailer: The Bat! (v3.0) Professional
      9 X-Mailer: The Bat! (v3.51.10) Professional
     10 X-Mailer: VM 7.19 under Emacs 21.2.1


so it does not appear your statement is true for thread hijacks

also there were 34 with neither X-Mailer nor User-Agent
git-send-email doesnt add 're:'
ive spotted one with RES: one with 'RE :'
one with '=?koi8-r?Q?Re[2]=3A_'
and 12 with Re[2]:
i did not remove these from the above mailer list due to lazyness
someone else can do this, but it wont help, most are not outlook caused

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Asymptotically faster algorithms should always be preferred if you have
asymptotical amounts of data
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