> statement like "It would foster mindless ..." something. I need an
> explanation as to how you feel it is going to adversely affect SC and I will
> try to either explain how it wouldn't or adjust my suggestion so that it
> wouldn't.
Paul,
Let me try to summarize.
SC has a problem. As good as you make the program, ultimately SC cannot
tell whether or not an email is spam. As we all know spam is about
consent not content. It also cannot tell whether or not an email
address or web link inside a spam is directly related to the spam or
just thrown in there by the spammer to throw off those who wish to
report him/her. As a result of both of these limitations there DOES
NEED to be human intervention in the reporting process. SC makes
reporting spam easier but not necessarily easy. The person reporting
the spam through SC needs to actually look through the body of the spam
to determine the context in which a weblink or email address appears and
determine if it is appropriate to report. Yes, it may not be easy for
the newcomer, but sending false reports negatively affects the
reputation of SC. If SC gets a bad reputation (and in some circles it
already has a bad reputation) people (sysadmins and abuse desks) stop
paying attention to these reports or starts bouncing the reports and SC
has lost all of its effectiveness.
Right now, I know your saying, "But that's all I want to do, stop false
reports." I think everybody here understands that, but it isn't as easy
as that. It's kinda like ballistic missile defense. One the surface it
seems like such a great idea, but there are deeper issues involved that
are sometimes quite subtle. In the case of SC the deeper issues are the
ease in reporting and the number of false reports. The fear of
implicating oneself forces you to closely pay attention to who exactly
you are reporting. If it becomes too easy to report, people consciously
or unconsciously stop paying attention the checkboxes and who exactly
they are reporting. Maybe the answer is to have none of the checkboxes
highlighted as a default, but then you would probably get a lot more
people who would just check them all. Like I said earlier, SC makes
reporting spam easier not necessarily easy. In the end SC is only as
good as its users.
-Peter
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