administrivia: why confirmation?

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

many people ask why the confirmation stuff is in place.

well, when moving a big list (like the bmw-digest, the move of which is in
progress), it's because i want to use the move to also clean the list of
defunct/bogus addresses.

in general, because there are occasional problems with what list admins
often call "subscription bombing", where an email forger with a grudge or
some latent hostility towards another party forges gratuitous subscription
requests in the name of the target party. by requiring confirmation of
subscription requests, these bombings come under control, at least with
respect to the lists i manage.

this still doesn't control "archive request bombing", which i had a nasty
run of maybe 2 years ago, because some as yet unidentified individual was
trying to unload on a bunch of aol users. someday i'll work that one out...

richard