[Theforum] Responsible public list practices

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Tue May 7 15:34:52 CDT 2002


> From: "Miriam Frost" <miriam at members.evolt.org>
>
> With over a thousand e-mails per week going through evolt, I'm not
> kvetching (much) about one or two spams that get through - especially
> as the content has almost always been stripped (the only one that
> didn't was that Africa scam). Does anyone know about the actual
> percentages of signal to noise? I've seen *much* worse get through in
> other places.

closing the list would reduce that to -- *zero*...

not to mention admins don't have to waste time managing filters in
a constant arms race with spam bots...

it's *stupid*... immensely, immeasurably *stupid* to waste that
time for the perceived benefit of a handful of people...

and so what if the content is stripped?  the subject lines aren't, and
those often contain some nasties...

> Seb, I'm glad I don't work where you work... if you can't explain to
> them what spam is... oof, you've got a hard row to hoe.

you're lucky... i know that most of my clients have filters in place to
trap and track things like that... flags are raised, employees are
harassed, and time is wasted -- not just the time spent deleting it...

i am constantly overwhelmed by how completely *dim* the counter
argument is:

some people want to post from other addresses.

in the meantime, a couple thousand subscribers have to waste
more collective time than those dozen people would waste
(subbing up nomail addresses just once) just by downloading,
parsing, and deleting them, and now by dealing with company
policy...

who cares if you think the company policy is stupid?

the member is still getting harassed and wasting time...

now, what real arguments can *anyone* bring to bear?

anyone?

> Closing the list would not inconvenience me; however, I'd like to hear
> more from the other side of the debate before it's settled once and
> for all.

the other side of the debate consists of, near as i can tell, four
people...  you've read dan's reply by now, and there's nothing
substantive in it...

too many people feel the issue is dismissed instead of addressed,
and the only people who dismiss it are a) in the seeming minority
and b) in control of most of the lists... again, see dan's post...

otherwise, they'd bend to the will of the membership at large -- as i
have done with theforum  (which was closed with an overwhelming
majority to a minority of 0 votes)...

here's an idea, how about a vote?  as if it isn't glaringly obvious by
now...

why do i have to keep arguing this?  why is this so hard to
conceive?  why don't we just do it already?

i really don't care that the software strips posts, guts HTML, or
makes me cheese sandwiches, i never *asked* for those features,
but they got forced on me, and now i read "converted from" and
empty spam messages regularly...  we look like idiots arguing that
"it's only a few" instead of just shutting them down...

again, the ones who can change it aren't listening to the will of the
group... i see a parallel...


--
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Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself
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