In the 8 years that the Team Ada list has been in existence we have always had high quality, high participation and low noise. However, our longevity may be our undoing. The occasional spam e-mail distributed to the list has grown to an onslaught, as evidenced by the amount of spam received in just the last two days. There is no evidence that this will subside - as discussed a few weeks ago, several of us are very diligent in reporting spam through channels such as SpamCop. Whether this is effective or whether it potentially invites more spam is hard to tell, but the spam continues. I believe that it is time to take action to prevent the spam from reaching our mailboxes. We have several options: we can close the list to addresses other than subscribers, we can move the list to another host server, we can shut down the list completely. There may be mechanisms to block certain offending domains from our list (the majority of our spam appears to come from one or two domains) - as list owner, I will investigate this and other such possibilities. What I would like to do in the short term is open up discussion on this topic, with the intent of reaching a quick and succinct resolution. I regret the inconvenience of an "off topic" discussion, but in the long term the intent is to keep the list viable for its actual purpose. The discussion period will end at 6 PM PST (9 PM EST) Sunday, April 7, 2002. During the discussion period, please suggest ways in which we can keep this list active and alive while substantially reducing or eliminating the flow of spam. Please preface the subject line of discussion messages with "FUTURE: ", so that Team Ada subscribers who do not wish to participate may easily identify them for deletion. The result of the discussion period will be a ballot that will be circulated to the list detailing options for the future of the Team Ada list. Votes from the balloting will be due by 6 PM PDT Sunday, April 14, and the majority opinion resulting from the ballot will be implemented. Thanks, Mike Berman Team Ada list admin