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