R help - Dec 2010 - Submissions that include an entire previous digest

Colleagues,

Today's digest (Volume 94, Issue 12) contained an entire copy of Digest, Vol
94, Issue 11.  It appears that an inconsiderate poster (Message 39 in Issue 12)
received the digest and clicked reply, thereby including the entire digest in
his/her submission (> 6000 additional lines of text).  This made it difficult
to scroll through the digest efficiently.

At minimum, posters should be aware that this is inconsiderable behavior.  

Is there some means for the mailing list to detect submissions that contain the
entirety of a previous digest (e.g., rejecting emails that contain both
"Subject: R-help Digest, Vol XX, Issue YY" and "End of R-help
Digest, Vol XX, Issue YY") to prevent this problem?

Dennis

Dennis Fisher MD
P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
Phone: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
www.PLessThan.com

On 12 December 2010 at 08:13, Dennis Fisher wrote:
| Colleagues,
| 
| Today's digest (Volume 94, Issue 12) contained an entire copy of Digest,
Vol 94, Issue 11.  It appears that an inconsiderate poster (Message 39 in Issue
12) received the digest and clicked reply, thereby including the entire digest
in his/her submission (> 6000 additional lines of text).  This made it
difficult to scroll through the digest efficiently.
| 
| At minimum, posters should be aware that this is inconsiderable behavior.  
| 
| Is there some means for the mailing list to detect submissions that contain
the entirety of a previous digest (e.g., rejecting emails that contain both
"Subject: R-help Digest, Vol XX, Issue YY" and "End of R-help
Digest, Vol XX, Issue YY") to prevent this problem?

By default, mailman (the Python software running this and many other mailing
lists) has a default size of 40 kB per post.  Default behaviour is to let the
moderator handle the post, one could also automatically reject it. We could
obviously dial the size down.

And speaking just for myself, I would have no problem unsubscribing serial
abusers of the list but others, including the kind sould patrolling this as
moderators, are more forgiving.

Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com