clean sweep

[cellio]

A couple of years ago, I created a moderated mailing list to act as a filter on an existing unmoderated SCA list. (The owner of that list and I have very different ideas about appropriate content, so where I (were I list owner) would have posted the occasional "let's bring this back on-topic or take it to email" message, he posted things like "please label your off-topic posts in the subject line". He sees no inherent problem with off-topic banter that goes on for 20 or 30 messages in a single day.)

Usually the list is well-behaved and gets maybe half a dozen posts a day. Occasionally it flares up.

I think this is my first "clean sweep" of a moderately-sized approval queue, though. 10 messages this morning and not a single one appropriate for passing through. During the past few days only about a quarter of the messages have made it past the moderator, so this isn't too surprising I guess, but it still startled me. It hasn't been this bad since all that virus-related traffic came through last month. (I didn't think we needed 60+ messages trading virus horror stories, either.)

I've come to realize that if the moderator of a mailing list is doing his job, most subscribers have no clue that he's doing his job. :-)