With respect, I do not realize why the moderators of this mailing-list allow these unwanted messages of "Aluminum Cable Market Enables Power Transmission". The most useful mailing-list "general" was closed for no proper reason; then, mailing-list "jdev" was closed for an improper reason; now, unwanted messages are allowed to be sent to the only mailing-list left. Is there an intention to further discourage more people from utilizing Jabber/XMPP, and foisting them into centralized messaging and publishing platforms? Where I am from, if a professional is overwhelmed by tasks (that is, accepts too much of clients), then it amounts to conflict-of-interest; therefore, I advise to unqualified members, who can not handle their responsibilities, to leave XSF; otherwise, I would advise to reorganize XSF. Kindly, Schimon

Greetings Guus, Certainly, I would be glad to help. My criticism was not of qualification or otherwise offending, but it was of time and load. If there are people who are willing and are also more available than others who are lesser available, then I advise to allow those who are more available. My criticism is direct and blatant; and, I do not intend to express in an indirect and soft manner which be more insinuative and an unnecessary waste of time. Post script ----------- The mention of mailing-lists "general" and "jdev", despite not related, is due to an apparent trend to further distance people away from XMPP, the network which should have been replacing almost the whole realm of HTTP, since 2005. I can even further compound to my criticism, by criticizing the tendency to implement European and North American policies and habits, issues that are not related to digital nor electronic concerns, surely is not helpful to further expand XMPP to Africa, Asia, and South America, especially due to blatant contradictions of different creeds and cultures. XMPP is being more and more exclusive to certain groups of people, while shunning others; and negligence, be it intentional or unintentional (e.g. this instance of undesired messages), is severely bad and suggests of deliberate sabotage by hostile elements within XSF, whoever those may be. Regards, Schimon On Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:46:49 +0200 Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Schimon,

The spam you're referring to got through after the recent server crash and the subsequent restoration of the list. Nobody is "allowing" these messages: the list is not moderated by hand, message by message. The volunteers who run our infrastructure are aware of it, and are working on improving the mail delivery problems that surfaced after the crash.

I understand you're unhappy about the closure of the jdev list. You're welcome to make the case for reconsidering that, but that is a separate discussion.

What I don't accept is the suggestion that the people keeping these services running are unqualified, or that they should leave the XSF. They give their own time to maintain infrastructure that the whole community relies on, and they deserve better than that.

If you'd like to help, for example with spam filtering or list administration, that would be genuinely welcome. Feel free to reach out to me or the infrastructure team.

Best regards,

Guus

On Wed, Oct 14, 2026 at 10:07 AM Schimon via Standards <standards@xmpp.org> wrote:

...

With respect, I do not realize why the moderators of this mailing-list allow these unwanted messages of "Aluminum Cable Market Enables Power Transmission".

The most useful mailing-list "general" was closed for no proper reason; then, mailing-list "jdev" was closed for an improper reason; now, unwanted messages are allowed to be sent to the only mailing-list left.

Is there an intention to further discourage more people from utilizing Jabber/XMPP, and foisting them into centralized messaging and publishing platforms?

Where I am from, if a professional is overwhelmed by tasks (that is, accepts too much of clients), then it amounts to conflict-of-interest; therefore, I advise to unqualified members, who can not handle their responsibilities, to leave XSF; otherwise, I would advise to reorganize XSF.

Kindly, Schimon _______________________________________________ Standards mailing list -- standards@xmpp.org To unsubscribe send an email to standards-leave@xmpp.org

With respect. Do you realize that I do not intend to consider yor statement. To me, any of your statements is routinely revoked. The terrible discrimination of software UWPX in favour of your unmaintained software, which I do not even intend to mention, is an event which obviously displays the blatant conflict-of-interest, which is certainly not for the general good. Do not try to shield misconducts by words of diversity. The fact that Africans, Asians, and South Americans are not as involved with XMPP is a concern which must be cared for. Please. To avoid from wasting your own time. Do not respond to my messages, and I further advise to refrain from stating anything forand against me. I shall ignore any further message from you. Also, to remind you, this is a concern of moderating messages, nothing else more. I have explained, in detail, to Mr. Guus der Kinderen, about the reason which prompted me to discuss of further concerns in relation to the subject matter. If you want to discuss of other concerns, that are not of moderating of messages, then you should do so in the appropriate arena. Not here. Schimon On Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:18:06 +0200 Georg Lukas <georg@op-co.de> wrote:

Dear Schimon,

writing on behalf of the modteam:

Spam is an issue with which all open online venues have to struggle. Historically, the defenses implemented against spam have been sufficient. This has changed recently and iteam is working on understanding why that has changed and is looking into options to improve the situation without making the hurdles for new posters unreasonably high.

...

 XMPP is being more and more exclusive to certain groups of people, while shunning others; and negligence, be it intentional or unintentional (e.g. this instance of undesired messages), is severely bad and suggests of deliberate sabotage by hostile elements within XSF, whoever those may be.

We are all committed to inclusion and diversity of the community, and we are open to constructive suggestions on how to become more inclusive. The XSF is driven by volunteers, on limited time and capacity. Suggesting that there are hostile elements within the XSF working against XMPP is a serious accusation, and nothing here supports it. Please abstain from further unfounded speculations of this sort.

Georg (on behalf of modteam)

Thanks for the explanation Guus. I hit send on my email before yours came in. Hopefully manual moderation won't be necessary then—although if it does turn out to be needed, my offer to help out still stands! -- *S. Badri* *Web:* badrihippo.thekambattu.rocks <https://badrihippo.thekambattu.rocks> *Chat:* badrihippo@disroot.org <https://invite.joinjabber.org/#badrihippo@disroot.org> *Social:* @badrihippo@fosstodon.org <https://fosstodon.org/@badrihippo>

On 10/14/26 2:06 AM, Schimon via Standards wrote:

With respect, I do not realize why the moderators of this mailing-list allow these unwanted messages of "Aluminum Cable Market Enables Power Transmission".

There is essentially one moderator for all the mailing lists: me. I don't intentionally "allow" spam messages through, because I don't moderate all messages manually - that would be a ridiculous policy. We already require subscriptions to the list in order to post, but we could further change the policy to be "confirm then moderate" so that the list moderator needs to manually approve all subscriptions. But that could introduce unwanted side-effects and delays, because how does the list moderator know which email addresses are nice people who want to discuss technical issues, and which are spammers? We receive spam messages only rarely (perhaps a few times a year?), and when they do appear I immediately ban the sender so that they will not send multiple messages. Spam is simply a price we pay for online communications, and sometimes we all need to simply hit "delete" on an unwanted message.

The most useful mailing-list "general" was closed for no proper reason; then, mailing-list "jdev" was closed for an improper reason; now, unwanted messages are allowed to be sent to the only mailing-list left.

We - *I*- shut down the jdev and juser lists because they were basically unused and because we have long been planning to disable all email functionality at the jabber.org domain (which is not an XSF domain anyway).

Is there an intention to further discourage more people from utilizing Jabber/XMPP, and foisting them into centralized messaging and publishing platforms?

Where I am from, if a professional is overwhelmed by tasks (that is, accepts too much of clients), then it amounts to conflict-of-interest; therefore, I advise to unqualified members, who can not handle their responsibilities, to leave XSF; otherwise, I would advise to reorganize XSF.

These statements are not worthy of further discussion. Peter

Dear Schimon, has it occurred to you that your exchange is generating substantially more off-topic noise on this list than the original spam message did? I appeal to your and my shared interest in preserving the focus of this list, and suggest that you take your exchange with the mods and tech team off list. Kind regards, Florian On Wed, 2026-10-14 at 17:24 +0300, Schimon via Standards wrote:

Peter.

As I stated earlier, there is no intention to blame anyone.

My intention is to solve issues, if people of authority would want to, of course.

Again, that statement, of my second paragraph, is not to insult people of authority for a supposed lack of desire to solve this isssue, but to state that I realize that I am not an authority; therefore, it depends on people of authority, obviously.

I am as literate as possible. I am not fond of parables, slang, or otherwise poetic terminology, because such figures of speech are vague, subject to too many of possible interpretations, and generally a waste of time.

On Wed, 14 Oct 2026 07:35:28 -0600 Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im> wrote:

...

On 10/14/26 2:06 AM, Schimon via Standards wrote:

...

With respect, I do not realize why the moderators of this mailing-list allow these unwanted messages of "Aluminum Cable Market Enables Power Transmission". 

There is essentially one moderator for all the mailing lists: me. I don't intentionally "allow" spam messages through, because I don't moderate all messages manually - that would be a ridiculous policy.

I realize it; however, this appears to be as an unusual lack of presence, for whatever reason; otherwise, it seems of a deliberate negligence.

Again, I use the word "apparent", and I do not blame you or anyone else.

Further, as I already stated, it be good to have more people involved in this process of moderation, if required; and, indeed, to me, it sems that it is required.

...

We already require subscriptions to the list in order to post, but we could further change the policy to be "confirm then moderate" so that the list moderator needs to manually approve all subscriptions. But that could introduce unwanted side-effects and delays, because how does the list moderator know which email addresses are nice people who want to discuss technical issues, and which are spammers?

Yes. I realize this concern. I do not have an opinion of it, as I am not well familiar with that concern.

...

We receive spam messages only rarely (perhaps a few times a year?), and when they do appear I immediately ban the sender so that they will not send multiple messages. Spam is simply a price we pay for online communications, and sometimes we all need to simply hit "delete" on an unwanted message.

I agree. I realize it.

I already wrote criticism about lack of activity (that obvious rarity), in this mailing-list thread, which I shall not repeat, as it is unnecessary and unrelated. I only mention this, for record.

...

...

The most useful mailing-list "general" was closed for no proper reason; then, mailing-list "jdev" was closed for an improper reason; now, unwanted messages are allowed to be sent to the only mailing-list left. 

We - *I*- shut down the jdev and juser lists because they were basically unused and because we have long been planning to disable all email functionality at the jabber.org domain (which is not an XSF domain anyway).

I disagree. I was an active poster, and so were others. Interestingly, that instance prompted me to implement the proposed concerns which I was asking about; so, Falkon internet browser now has a bookmark synchronization system which is based upon XMPP PubSub.

Disabling any form of communication which is based upon storage (i.e. publishing) is bad. Messages appear, and only stored in logs, of entities which were present during sending of messages; therefore, a form of storage-based communication (e.g. forum, mailing-list) is critical for this project.

Messages are messages. Posts are posts. These are different, and serve different purposes.

...

...

Is there an intention to further discourage more people from utilizing Jabber/XMPP, and foisting them into centralized messaging and publishing platforms?

Where I am from, if a professional is overwhelmed by tasks (that is, accepts too much of clients), then it amounts to conflict-of-interest; therefore, I advise to unqualified members, who can not handle their responsibilities, to leave XSF; otherwise, I would advise to reorganize XSF. 

These statements are not worthy of further discussion.

I disagree.

My statements were most moderated and subtle as possible, and the overall behaviours, reactions, and unanswered questions, in years and years, raise many concerns that amount to a need to audit XSF for that impossible continuous failure of XMPP of twenty years, which obviously requires effors to achieve; therefore, it appears, to me, and to others as well, that XSF might be more infected by a controlled opposition behaviour than an opposition control behaviour, whoever those responsible elements might be, be them internal or external to XSF.

With respect, I know you since I was 17 years old, and I have great respect for you ever since. Needless to state, that you were also one of the most influencial figures to influence me to be involved with XMPP.

Therefore, I am extremely cautious to challenge people who are older than myself, even older by a single day; and, this is a fundamental principle which is engraved in our blood, of Iraqi people.

However, I would strongly advise you not to attempt nor try to intensify feelings by imitating my statement in supposed support of another one to which message I wrote a similar statement. I had a good and absolutely legitimate reason, by the supposed principles of XSF itself, to write that statement of my last message.

Again, I advise not to intervene with possible conflicts that are not of yours, nevermind if it is a member of your organization or not.

My supposed "unrelated" remarks were related indeed to amount years of concerns; yet, it appears that some of the posters, here, think to abuse unrelated remarks, of their own, to further this discussion to unrelated arenas.

To repeat, to the readers, this discussion is ONLY about moderating of mailing-list messages, not otherwise.

Schimon _______________________________________________ Standards mailing list -- standards@xmpp.org To unsubscribe send an email to standards-leave@xmpp.org

Hi Peter,

I have a solution in mind: put the first mail from a new sender under review and then once accepted allow subsequent mails to pass through. This would hopefully thwart most bots, and wouldn't be as much of a burden as reviewing every mail.

You beat me to it, but I was going to suggest this too. It's what we have been using for FSCI (Free Software Community of India) mailing lists and has been working out quite well. A spam filter in front of that helps reduce the noise further, of course. -- *S. Badri* *Web:* badrihippo.thekambattu.rocks <https://badrihippo.thekambattu.rocks> *Chat:* badrihippo@disroot.org <https://invite.joinjabber.org/#badrihippo@disroot.org> *Social:* @badrihippo@fosstodon.org <https://fosstodon.org/@badrihippo>