[SURBL-Discuss] Revised DMOZ data, got Wikipedia domains too

Bill Landry billl at pointshare.com
Fri Oct 8 20:50:05 CEST 2004


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex Broens" <surbl at alexb.ch>

> >>>  http://spamcheck.freeapp.net/whitelists/wikipedia-dmoz.srt
> >>>
> >>>Please also take a look at these blocklist hits (potential FPs)
> >>>and share what you think:
> >
> >
http://spamcheck.freeapp.net/whitelists/wikipedia-dmoz-blocklist.summed.txt
> >
> >>>Would there be many FNs (missed spams) if we whitelisted all
> >>>of these?  In other words are these all truly False Positives?
> >>>If not, which ones do you feel are true spammers and why.
> >>
> >>probably not a new idea, but why not run a "wl.surbl.org" with all the
> >>whitelisted domains and ppl can choose to use it or not.
> >
> > I like this idea!  Whitelist the most commonly used 1,000 or so domains,
and
> > then create a wl.surbl.org for the rest of the wikipedia-dmoz domains.
>
> WOW... Bill didn't bark at me this time.

I have been trying to bark less and purr more.  ;-)

Apologies for any previous transgressions - must have been too much coffee
and too little sleep (that's my excuse and I sticking by it!).

> my point is the following:
>
> take for example "angelfire. com". This domain may have legitimate users
> but my user base would NEVER have contact with anybody hosting a site or
> anything there. If they support spam, list them, put pressure on them to
> stop supporting spammers, bla, bla, bla.
> I wouldn't appreciate it being whitelisted as then if there's abuse, and
> it does get blacklisted, there's no pressure on the domain holder to
> clean up.

That's why creating a WL SURBL (or SURWL) might be a good idea.  Then those
that have more tolerance for spam can use WL to reduce the weight of
potential FPs from those sometimes abused domains that periodically get
listed on one of the other SURBL lists.

> As I imagine we're fighting spam here, not just filtering, I have a
> certain difficulty understanding why the world is crying for
> whitelisting instead of putting pressure on so called whitehats who
> support abuse for a lifetime.

Agreed, but that is a process that is taking its own sweet time to evolve.

> as Chris said, you could make whitelisting a lifetime task.
> I believe the better approach would be to decrease potential FP's by
> increasing the reporting QUALITY !!!!!!!!

Indeed, however, I still like your idea of a WL list over outright
whitelisting, except for the most common legit domains.

Bill



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