Re: A Shameful Surrender to Pornographers

In article <telecom26.114.9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <jmeissen@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Note: mention is often made of "the secret word" to include in the
subject line to prove that the submission isn't spam. Unfortunately, the
word is very secret. I've yet to see it mentioned in any recent posting,
and I can't find it in the submission guidelines on the website. So I
would like to request that Pat at least point out, without actually
speaking the secret word, how we are to determine the secret word so we
can use it.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For Gawd's sakes! This will be the last
time -- hopefully -- I have to use the word 'telecom'. Do not make me
say a word like that again in this Family Oriented Digest, please!
Now you were otherwise saying ... PAT]

Note to the esteemed moderator -- you might want to consider how a _new_
reader of the newsgroup is supposed to divine: (a) the need to use a
'magic word', (b) =how= to use it, or (c) *WHATITHEHELL* it is.

You have invented an extremely effective way to 'discourage' new people
from participating in the group -- 'ignore them and they'll go away'.

Consider the _vast_ amount (*snicker*) of spam you get with either a
'Telecom digest' subject line, or the subject line of one of the
articles as posted to USENET. You -can- safely put the 'magic word'
on all the _outgoing_ messages, so that anyone who simply 'replies' to
the message has the appropriate incantations done for them
automatically.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In order for me to divine how a new
reader is supposed to figure out this divine news group, first we need
to have YOU divine the volume and nature of messages received in this
divine news group each day: Let's say there are about 500-600 messages
each day purporting to be legitimate. Actually, maybe five or ten are
legitimate, the other 590-595 are spam. That's only the count of
messages which the spam filters (procmail and spam assassin) failed to
catch.

Instead of using your 'extremely effective way of discouraging them
from participating' (and really, do _you_ want spammers participating?),
I still send them a note saying their submission has been rejected. I
then manually scan those approximatly 595-600 items, ocassionally finding
some _NON-SPAM LEGITIMATE_ item, rarely, but ocassionally, and of
course I use it when I find it. Some readers say I am too loose about
that part of it: Are you suggesting I should be looser still in my
manual selection of what appears here? My experience has been that
when I widely publish the secret word (as you seem to be implying I
should do) my work load only increases. That is, if the magic word
was 'abracadabra' and it was published here daily, not only would you
Usenetters have the incantations done for you, but so would all the
spammers. In other words, messages with the subject line "This is the
telecom subject" would begin appearing in my system as "Abracadabra
This is the telecom subject" (or perhaps just 'abracadabra') with the
remaining five thousand or so words being the same foolishness as
before; instead of me being able to quickly scan the header and first
few words of the 'questionable message' and devote most of my
attention to the chosen messages for the day, I'd be going through
dozens of 'abracadabra' messages tossing them out. Instead of being
able to 'speed read' the subject line of dozens of messages at once
and tossing them, you'd have me read through the same number of
messages all incanting 'abracadabra' at me and wind up tossing them
anyway, is that it?

If someone writes here (new user, or whoever) I generally catch them
and deal with them, do I not? But I'll tell you what I can do,
Robert: Since you are a much more experienced Usenetter than myself, I
can see to it that all my rejects get re-routed to whichever moderated
or _unmoderated_ Usenet group you suggest, where you and other
Usenetters can pick through them looking for the rare new user --
innocent and virginal and all that rot -- which I somehow missed and
deal with the poor guy appropriatly. You can just let him know you are
taking over for the Moderator Who Doesn't Give an Iota (of much
anything), and that you will see to it his intelligent messages, et al
will be dealt with properly and appropriately.

ObRobert Snicker: *snicker*. PAT]

.

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