I am wondering if the flood of spam is going to basically kill Usenet. It is happening to ALL the newsgroups I subscribe to. I know droves of people leaving this and other Usenet groups.
I also subscribe to a number of Yahoo groups. Even when posting itself is not moderated, there IS a moderator for each group. So far there has been no attacks of similar scale on these groups. Even if it does eventually occur, one can then switch to moderating all messages with a quick setting of options, unlike the "voting" process needed to do this with Usenet. There can also be moderating of who joins the list, and posting restricted to members only.
So far, however, all of the Yahoo groups I participate in related to modeling are genre specific or limited in other ways. There is no group with the wide topics of discussion, which is why I stay with rms. I do not want to take on moderating another Yahoo group, as I already moderate two. But if anyone else would like to start a "scale modeling" group, that is- a very wide subject group, I would be happy to help, and maybe co-moderate (Yahoo allows a number of co-moderators to be set up to help administer each group).
I would be willing to help with the moderating if we can get a consensus from the regulars on this board. We would need the support of everyone who hangs out here to make it worthwhile.
I'm filtering out around 95% of the spam with News Proxy and it makes a big difference. You think rms has it bad, take a hike over to rec.woodworking. Something like a couple of hundred spam posts a day over there. I'm now beginning to consider a UDP on google groups, which is unfair on the legitimate guys who post from there to rms but enough is enough.
Okay, but how? I come on two or three times a day, but I doubt that that would be enough to fight the spam if I was moderating. I think that it would be a big job. Might be easier to either start a Yahoo group or co-opt an existing one that has fallen into disuse. I belong to a bunch that haven't seen action in months, some cases years. By the same token, there isn't any spam there either.
There will be if the groups become active. I belong to several yahoo groups but even most of the active ones are slow, and frankly, often dull. Not to mention that in some cases the slightest off topic comment gets you banned or at least roundly cussed. I'd like to see RMS saved and the spammers booted, but it aint gonna happen.
on 4/22/2008 10:40 AM flak monkey said the following:
I also subscribe to rec.woodworking. As a one-time woodworker, I just lurk mostly. Since my filters are set on my newsserver rather than each individual group, all my subscribed groups use the one set of filter rules, so I don't get 99% of the spam there, or on any other subscribed groups.
I agree, something needs to be done or it's the end of newsgroups for me.
My ISP doesn't provide newsgroup access so I took out an AstraNews subscription. Basically, if it is still like this when my quota runs out then I shan't be renewing.
Killfile the bastards I say, delete or simply ignore the posts. I personally do not use a killfile feature, I just read what is of interest to me and get rid of the spam or junk. However, if the group decides to go with a moderator, count me in, but don't have me sign in with a password and other secret society crap.
Ray ===
D> I am wondering if the flood of spam is going to basically kill
Many years ago, someone invited me to join their Yahoo group called Armorholics. I joined and was made a moderator, but it is basically a free, but unused armor modeling site. I offer it up to anyone who wants to take it over as a successor to RMS. Or if someone wants to see how that Yahoo group is formed and can create an RMS group using the Armorholics site as a template.
How does one set up filters for this crap? I'vce never seen anything on the Usenet interface that would lead me to think there is a filter of any sort?
I'm very near to scrapping my connection with most mailing lists and Usenet. The spam has increased dramatically everywhere. It's just not worth my time to wade through the mailing list messages any more.
The spam comes from the same few sources everywhere I go. There must be a way to stop it, and there also must be a lot of money in sending it.
It is trivially easy to forge approval of a message, and nasty programs
*designed* to do bad things to newsgroups make it even easier.
Getting a vote through with enough *participants* would be a problem at the moment, far less worrying about which way the vote would go.
So, we'd have to get enough votes for "rec.models.scale.mod" to be created, then wait for it propagate, and so on. Changing groups to be moderated doesn't work.
Usenet's dying, but it's not from spam. It's from lack of support and interest from ISPs. They and others would love for usenet to dry up and drive everything to web based forums where they can add our eyes to the ad streams. Probably accounts for the spam assault on usenet - drive us to look at the webside billboards.
I did eGroups with other hobbies back when the web forums started to emerge and gain in popularity - they have their uses. But they have their issues as well. I saw many a group implode under the weight of the "Cult of Personality" that inevitably intrudes to any gathering of humans where members are less than on equal terms. But most groups just withered away from lack of interest. And yet no frills, black and white all-text usenet rolls on year after year. Granted this forum and a few others I frequent are nothing like their former selves. Traffic is way down from the heady years of 97 or so (God, was that really 10-11 years ago) when you'd have
250-300 posts per DAY. You can pitch as many reasons at Usenet as you can the hobby itself for the decline. 350 messages might be a week's worth now (not counting spam and trolls to stupid to realize they're thrashing about in the binaries group). I don't miss the 250-350 posts per day. I just miss guys like Al and others that are irreplaceable to the hobby and most importantly to RMS.
Usnet for me is like picking up the newspaper off my front porch and sitting down and reading it with a cup of coffee. Admittedly, my laptop is more likely to be beside that cup of coffee these days when I'm getting the national news, but I also still get and read the newspaper. Despite the fact that Knight Ridder are just left of Karl Marx. I like to keep up on the small local stories, obits, etc. When it comes to national news I get that from the web. By the time the stories make news print it's stale by at least
24 hours.
And when I'm thru reading and feel like writing long winded messages like this I choose usenet. ;-)
Like I said, enjoy the simplicity of the usenet - where therre's none of those squiggly little passwords to enter in to prove you're not a web bot. No cookies, no ad streams, no silly alter ego profile pictures that are almost never an actual picture of the person, and no equally silly forum member or message rating systems.
That's right, no 3 out of 5 tubes of glue for this post from MajorRevellWmB_2008.
Sounds incredibly uninteresting. I already hang around the board at Spotlight Hobbies (formerly Hobby Heaven). It's privately owned and run and you can't say things that might annoy the owner or harshly criticise a car model kit, aftermarket supplier or one of the other posters (I wouldn't savage a co-poster, anyway ;)). Off-topic subjects are frequent. I guess I go there to see other's models and the occasional reference material shown. When they stick to the models it is one of the better places for info, BUT, I like this format much better.
I'm wondering if it isn't tied into the Tibet mess. It seemed to take off around that time. Since little in China is done that the government doesn't know about, I wouldn't be surprised to find them behind it.
Personally, I have no plans to watch any of the Olympics. That's partly because the Nothing But Crap network does such a miserable job on the ones I have watched and partially because I think holding the games there was about as bright as holding them in Berlin in '36.
The problem with killfiles is that many of us have ISPs who no longer support Usenet, and so we cannot use newsreaders (unless we pay for a third party server provider). So we use a web interface, usually Google groups.
in article snipped-for-privacy@a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com, Don Stauffer in Minnesota at snipped-for-privacy@usfamily.net wrote on 4/22/08 9:57 AM:
I access r.m.s. via my isp (Comcast) using my email program (Outlook Express). I don't personally find the multitude of spam postings that troublesome -- I just ignore them. What I do find bothersome is the ratio of spam postings to legitimate modeling postings. Sorta like in a garden: if there are enough flowers, it's easier to ignore a few weeds; but a dearth of flowers makes the weeds disproportionately obvious.
With absolutely no disrespect to the fine modelers who still post to r.m.s., it seems as if many have migrated to other forums, especially the ones at HyperScale and Aircraft Resource Center. I confess that I check out Plane Talking at HyperScale more often than r.m.s. these days because there is always a lot more (sometimes) useful modeling discussion going on. I don't know what factors precipitated the migration. Did people get sick of the vitriolic flame wars? Did accessing newsgroups become more difficult?
Whatever the reasons, I think the biggest threat to r.m.s. is not the spam but the dwindling of useful, model-related postings. As in so many other institutions, it's all about the people. What can we do to lure people back and/or attract new posters?
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.