Do you want to support the dnswl.org project?

[Matthias Leisi <ma...@leisi.net>]

Hello SA users list,

The SpamAssassin rules are an important input for the dnswl.org
project; in turn, the dnswl.org project helps to reduce the chance of
false positives through the SA ruleset.

The SpamAssassin and the dnswl.org projects have a significant overlap
in the user base, and an improvement in the data quality for dnswl.org
would thus directly improve the accuracy for the SpamAssassin user
base.

To this end, we (as in "the dnswl.org project") are looking to expand
the number and diversity of editors working on the project, and also
some additional technical work (eg in improving our home-grown data
import tools). Below you'll find the text we posted today in the news
section of the project website with more details.

Please contact me or admins /at/ dnswl.org if you have further
questions or to discuss on how to get engaged with the dnswl.org
project.

Thanks for your time,
-- Matthias

PS: We are currently doing fine in terms of hardware/network connectivity.


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At dnswl.org we serve over 80'000 organisations with our database
which contains 150'000 (and growing) entries of "good mailservers".

In order to maintain the quality of the data and of our
infrastructure, we are looking for additional volunteers to support
the community and the project. While there is a lot of work to do, we
have the most pressing needs in three categories:

* Operation of infrastructure (rented or donated hardware, some
flavours of Linux, DNS and other software)
* Development of admin tools (both the web GUI and batch processing)
* Data editing and interaction with requestors

If you would like to work in one of the areas, or in some combination,
please contact the admin team (admins/at/dnswl.org) or Matthias
(matthias/at/leisi.net). This is mostly volunteer work (but financing
for infrastructure is assured), but it would be good if you could
spend a handful of hours a week on the project.

Below is a description of what we see as the priorities in the three
areas. This list is not exhaustive, and you have all the freedom to
tinker as long as it serves the goal of the project :)


dnswl.org infrastructure

We operate a number of servers for public access via DNS, and for
editing the data. There is a significant amount of code (Perl and PHP)
involved for editing data, aggregating and enriching log and usage
data, and operating the infrastructure. We need to "keep the stuff
running" and fix occasional bugs. In order to simplify the systems
management tasks, we would need to introduce new tools or improve the
existing ones.

We use a mostly standard tool chain (Apache, Perl, PHP, Postgres,
Bind, rbldnsd, rsync, Nagios, Smokeping, Request Tracker, Postfix and
so on).


dnswl.org development

* Improve the public request form to allow better interaction and more
automation.
* Improve the public search interface to expose more of our internal data.
* Improve the currently minimal IPv6 support.
* Improve abuse reporting capabilities (which are currently pretty crude).
* Implement URIBL lookups.
* Rewrite the "reputation overview" GUI.


dnswl.org data editing

Although we use a number of tools to help with the maintenance and the
growth of our data, most of our actions are manual in nature (ie,
involve a manual verification click or some similar action). We
interact with requestors and other stakeholders, we assess the
trustworthiness of entries, we maintain the quality of our data.

We want to expand the number and diversity of our editors. If you
maintain your own local reputation list which you want to offer for
import into dnswl.org data, or if you are willing to spend a few hours
a week for data editing and related tasks, please get in touch with
us.

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