On Wednesday, December 11, 2002, at 12:03 PM, Paul Tansley wrote:
Paul
I agree with the paranoia comment. Where exactly is all this spam I'm
supposed to be receiving? I get 60 odd e-mails a day from ProDig, but I
didn't consider that to be spam :-) A lot of it is rehashed subjects, which
would be better looked up under the Archive, perhaps? Though I admit, that
sometimes it's easier just to ask the "panel" a quick question and receive a
quick answer, than spend ages trawling through past posts. (I must admit, I
haven't yet checked the archive pages, I don't have the time :-(
On a spam note. I'd hate to receive spam, but I'm not really sure why people
do? I'm not being stupid here, I know the problem exists, but how come I
don't get any?
Just thank your lucky stars. I have just cleared out 898 spams from an old e-mail address I gave up using 9 months ago - and that was the result of just 10 days mail. That's why I gave up that address. Admittedly I and my son had been using it for over 6 years and had probably subscribed to all sorts of things that we wouldn't now. The worrying thing is that 18 months ago the amount of spam we were getting on that account was pretty negligible. I read somewhere in the last couple of weeks - I can't now find the article - that something like 90% of spam originates from a very small number of server set ups - I may be wrong but I think the figure was 14. If that is so, you can see how quickly you would escalate from no spam to a load full.
Interestingly - I changed the mail address on my own website a couple of months ago and in the last couple of weeks I have started getting spam to that address - not the porno stuff, but companies trying to sell me Search Engine submittal services etc - but it's still spam. That address, incidentally, exists only on that site and only in one place. I use it nowhere else.
I don't think we can be too careful in our attitude to spam. As I said at the top - if you aren't getting any - be thankful.
As far as e-mail addresses in postings are concerned, I am happy to report that as current Duty List Mum, there have been NO miscreants of the new requirement since I took over from Richard on Monday. Yes there have been some niggles which may require some attention from the list owner, but at least excluding e-mail addresses does seem manageable to listees.
On the question of the archive, I personally think in time it will prove invaluable. I use the archives on some other lists extensively and in my experience it doesn't stop new listees asking old questions, but handled properly can provide a useful further source of knowledge. Certainly this list mum would not like to see people being banned from asking questions because the answer already lay in the archive. I seem to remember that it's not that long since there were a number of calls for a list archive - but of course if the archive had existed then I would be able to check that :-)
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