On 11/13/07, Ian Patterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've just joined this group, and carefully browsing thru by Topic to > see what I can learn.... yet I need to scroll past a good number of > obvious blatant "spam" posts. > It's offputting. :-(
I moderate a few groups at Yahoo and the most effective way I've found to combat spam is to set the default status to 'moderated', then after someone has posted an on-topic post, I change that person to 'unmoderated', which seems a good compromise in terms of workload on the moderator vs letting spammers in. I get one or two people a week join my groups who are clearly spammers - the two big giveaways are usually the username, and the intro message that they're asked to send the moderator when they request to join. I seldom turn anyone away, but I do leave a lot of people in moderated status - those who never post, and those whose first post is spam or content-free. This scheme has never been disruptive to the groups, and we've had only *one* spam in all the time I've been moderating - and that was when a spammer forged the 'from' address of someone who was unmoderated. Not much we can do to get around that one unless Yahoo blocks submissions by email. Personally I like submitting by email so I'm willing to live with the small risk there. I'ld also recommend to the moderators to delete spam posts from the archives. Graham
