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Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 18:30:02 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: CFPs and con invitations on the list (was: [cansecwest] Advanced PHP Hacking)

Hi,

I've just approved Laurent's posting, even though this is sort of an
exception lately.  Several other postings of "this nature" (not training
courses but mostly conference CFPs, though) were not approved.  Yet I
thought it was time to revisit this issue, and Laurent's posting was a
good choice because I knew that Laurent had actually joined the list
first (unlike most others who try to cross-post their CFPs in here).

The last time this topic was brought up, two of the list members
("founding members", so to speak) said they were OK with these postings
getting through to the list "presuming they stay on the topic of Open
Source Security" and "are not badly cross-posted":

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/01/07/4
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/01/07/9
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/01/07/12

In practice, many of the postings were in fact "badly cross-posted" and
none of the moderators approved them (so they should have bounced back
to the senders in a few days).  Sometimes it is difficult to determine
if a posting is cross-posted "badly enough" or not, though.

Another thing to keep in mind is that those cross-posts provide extra
visibility to oss-security, making more people aware of this list.  If
we don't approve them, then people will stop trying to CC: oss-security
on their announcements, so we won't be getting this extra visibility.
It is not clear whether this would be a good or a bad thing.  So far,
the visibility did not hurt, though - reasonable people were joining the
list, and we have pre-moderation for postings by new members anyway.

Can we agree on an approach that would make moderation decisions easier?
With about one announcement of this kind per month coming our way lately
(on average), maybe we should simply be approving them all, whether
cross-posted or not?

Should we treat invitations to cons and training courses with expensive
registration differently from those that are free or cheap?  I imagine
that Laurent's posting was a for-profit one, which was one of the reasons
why I hesitated approving it.  I'd rather not base moderation decisions
on this, though, because it'd be difficult to draw the line, and also
because these "expensive" postings are not any worse in terms of the
visibility they might provide to oss-security (if visibly CC'ed, which
was not the case for Laurent's posting).

Comments?

Alexander

On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 10:59:59AM +0100, Laurent OUDOT at TEHTRI-Security wrote:
> I'd like to announce a Security Master's Dojo course during next
> CanSecWest 2010 in Vancouver (March 22-26 2010).
> 
> Title: Advanced PHP Hacking (!)
[...]

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