Another Fortran forum (without the spam)?
sturlamolden
I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
Dan Nagle
On 2011-04-17 15:01:12 -0400, sturlamolden said:
> Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>
> I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
You might try Fortran 90 List <COMP-FO...@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
You must register to enroll on the list.
--
Cheers!
Dan Nagle
Tim Prince
> Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>
> I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
>
It's already been pointed out that a few simple filters, or subscription
to a competent news feed, will cure it. If we here in the western USA
adhered to local politics (anything which google or Yahoo do gets a
pass) and refused to use European news feeds, we would have to give up
as well.
--
Tim Prince
sturlamolden
> You might try Fortran 90 List <COMP-FO...@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> You must register to enroll on the list.
Thanks :-)
sturlamolden
> It's already been pointed out that a few simple filters, or subscription
> to a competent news feed, will cure it.
Sure, but I'm not setting that up. Nor do I want my name to show up
between ads for counterfeit viagra.
Sturla
Uno
> Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>
> I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Try facebook. I wouldn't read c.l.f. without NIN.
I've never done it, but are those ads for viagra and xanax legit, or
would they just take your money or f with your credit card?
--
Uno
Tim Prince
I got the hint about individual.net at last when my paid ISP account
deleted usenet feed.
--
Tim Prince
Gib Bogle
It isn't hard to set up a news feed and some filters. If that seems to
be too much trouble you presumably don't get much value from this newsgroup.
Daniel Carrera
> I got the hint about individual.net at last when my paid ISP account
> deleted usenet feed.
Does individual.net work better than the eternal server?
I don't know how much spam the news.eternal-september.org server might
be catching, but honestly, to me it feels like it catches none. The only
thing that has made comp.lang.fortran bearable for me was switching to
Thunderbird which made it possible to kill threads with only medium hassle.
Daniel.
Dieter Britz
> Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>
> I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
If someone would volunteer to be moderator (and knows how to do it),
making this ng moderated would fix the problem.
--
Dieter Britz (dieterhansbritz<at>gmail.com)
Gary L. Scott
for newsgroups (work ok for email).
Tim Prince
> On 04/17/2011 10:29 PM, Tim Prince wrote:
>> I got the hint about individual.net at last when my paid ISP account
>> deleted usenet feed.
>
> Does individual.net work better than the eternal server?
>
individual.net filters out nearly everything from google. No way to know
if someone tries to post legitimately through google.
Similar problem with email from google; tbird directs much of it to spam
by association.
--
Tim Prince
Tim Prince
> On 4/19/2011 3:16 AM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> The only
>> thing that has made comp.lang.fortran bearable for me was switching to
>> Thunderbird which made it possible to kill threads with only medium
>> hassle.
> How, I'm using Thunderbird, and the "junk" options are all grayed out
> for newsgroups (work ok for email).
As you don't have control over usenet, you can't move things to junk
mail. You can "ignore thread" and create filters to ignore threads
posted by certain individuals. This has limited use for me, as I don't
care to update filters on multiple installations of tbird.
--
Tim Prince
Gordon Sande
I switched to eternal-september after my ISP dropped newsgroups. The
spam level stayed about the same, namely not much. (Except for the
persistant complainer who continues on about googlegroups but refuses
to switch. Yes I am feeding the troll. Sorry.)
The small amount of spam in c.l.f seems to be short bursts of online
drug sales. Interestingly there seems little of it in other groups.
Another group seems to have a moderate traffic of instructors manuals.
I do not bother with filters or killfiles (except for one total idiot
in another group - at least he is polite even if totally out to lunch).
Gary L. Scott
could easily directly junk to a junk news local folder.
dpb
...
> I switched to eternal-september after my ISP dropped newsgroups. The
> spam level stayed about the same, namely not much. ...
>
> The small amount of spam in c.l.f seems to be short bursts of online
> drug sales. Interestingly there seems little of it in other groups.
> Another group seems to have a moderate traffic of instructors manuals.
> I do not bother with filters or killfiles (except for one total idiot
> in another group - at least he is polite even if totally out to lunch).
...
I noticed the same pattern -- wondered why clf appears different;
presumed it was owing to less overall traffic that it hasn't seen the
attention of other groups at the server but it would also seem that all
the filtering would be automagic so 'tis a puzzle why don't see the same
bursts on other groups...
Still, it's not so large as to be much of an issue.
On eternal, I'd been using it for quite some time but recently seemed as
though it was glitchy so have at least temporarily gone back over to the
aioe.org feed.
The last T'bird update seems a little more flaky as well; I've not tried
rolling back yet, though...
--
Richard Maine
> Does individual.net work better than the eternal server?
>
> I don't know how much spam the news.eternal-september.org server might
> be catching, but honestly, to me it feels like it catches none.
I've no personal experience with eternal-september, but reports from
others have generally been positive. Wonder if you hit a brief bad
spurt.
I renewed my individual.net account for the 3rd year (or it might have
been 4th, but at least 3rd) not long ago. Quite happy with it. Typically
on the order of a spam item two a month. Every once in a while there
will be a brief flurry of up to half a dozen. Checking the last 30 days,
I see 2 spam messages (plus one test message and one whose entire body
was literally "message text"). That's dwarfed by all the messages
complaining about spam.
--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
Ron Shepard
nos...@see.signature (Richard Maine) wrote:
> Daniel Carrera <dan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Does individual.net work better than the eternal server?
> >
> > I don't know how much spam the news.eternal-september.org server might
> > be catching, but honestly, to me it feels like it catches none.
>
> I've no personal experience with eternal-september, but reports from
> others have generally been positive. Wonder if you hit a brief bad
> spurt.
>
> I renewed my individual.net account for the 3rd year (or it might have
> been 4th, but at least 3rd) not long ago. Quite happy with it. Typically
> on the order of a spam item two a month. Every once in a while there
> will be a brief flurry of up to half a dozen. Checking the last 30 days,
> I see 2 spam messages (plus one test message and one whose entire body
> was literally "message text"). That's dwarfed by all the messages
> complaining about spam.
I use MT-NewsWatcher to read newsgroups. My news server does not
filter anything (or at least not much), so I set my reader to filter
out various posts. Right now, I have all posts from google
filtered. That takes care of essentially all of the spam. The
problem with this is that there are a few legitimate posts from
google users, so I miss them unless someone else replies to them and
I see the original posts that way.
When my news reader first downloads the headers, it tells me how
many total unread messages there are. Then when I open the news
group window it applies the filters and only shows the subject lines
that pass the filters. So I don't see any of the filtered posts,
but I do get an idea about how many such posts there are. The last
few days it seems like there are 50/day or so that get filtered out.
There are only about 10 legit posts per day in c.l.f, so the signal
to noise ratio has been pretty bad lately.
I filter by clicking on "Filter this Author" in a menu (or by typing
command-shift-A). Sometimes I edit it a little to make it more or
less general, but basically it takes about 1 second to filter
someone this way. That is an acceptable amount of effort. Most
newsreaders have comparable capabilities that require similar
effort. These features have been available in news readers for over
20 years. This is not new technology.
$.02 -Ron Shepard
Steve Lionel
> I renewed my individual.net account for the 3rd year (or it might have
> been 4th, but at least 3rd) not long ago. Quite happy with it. Typically
> on the order of a spam item two a month. Every once in a while there
> will be a brief flurry of up to half a dozen. Checking the last 30 days,
> I see 2 spam messages (plus one test message and one whose entire body
> was literally "message text"). That's dwarfed by all the messages
> complaining about spam.
I also have used individual.net for several years and am quite happy
with it. My experience is like Richard's - I see almost no spam in the
newsgroup, but do see the same people spamming the forum over and over
with complaints about spam, seemingly oblivious to the numerous
resolutions offered, and wanting everyone else to change what they do
instead.
--
Steve Lionel
Developer Products Division
Intel Corporation
Merrimack, NH
For email address, replace "invalid" with "com"
User communities for Intel Software Development Products
http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/
Intel Software Development Products Support
http://software.intel.com/sites/support/
My Fortran blog
http://www.intel.com/software/drfortran
Refer to http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice
for more information regarding performance and optimization choices in
Intel software products.
Daniel Carrera
> On 4/19/2011 3:16 AM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>>
>> I don't know how much spam the news.eternal-september.org server might
>> be catching, but honestly, to me it feels like it catches none. The only
>> thing that has made comp.lang.fortran bearable for me was switching to
>> Thunderbird which made it possible to kill threads with only medium
>> hassle.
>>
> for newsgroups (work ok for email).
Nothing much. I was just referring to the fact that you can press 'K' to
kill a thread or post. A pretty dismal compliment for Tbird, I realize,
but other news readers I tried were worse.
Daniel.
Daniel Carrera
> Daniel Carrera<dan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Does individual.net work better than the eternal server?
>>
>> I don't know how much spam the news.eternal-september.org server might
>> be catching, but honestly, to me it feels like it catches none.
>
> I've no personal experience with eternal-september, but reports from
> others have generally been positive. Wonder if you hit a brief bad
> spurt.
I get a brief bad spurt roughly every 2-3 days, with each spurt
containing about a dozen spams. So it is not a constant stream of spam,
but it is still a regular annoyance. At least the spams are more or less
together so they are easier to kill.
> I renewed my individual.net account for the 3rd year (or it might have
> been 4th, but at least 3rd) not long ago. Quite happy with it. Typically
> on the order of a spam item two a month.
That's a better record than with eternal. Thanks.
Daniel.
Daniel Carrera
> sturlamolden wrote:
>
>> Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>>
>> I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
>
> If someone would volunteer to be moderator (and knows how to do it),
> making this ng moderated would fix the problem.
One relatively easy solution is to require registration before posting.
In my experience managing a mailing list, it works fine as long as you
don't care if a legitimate user fails to register before posting. If you
do care, then it's as much work as moderation.
Daniel.
Richard Maine
Except that newsgroups don't work that way. This is a "big 8" newsgroup.
Rules and procedures for them have been in place for over 3 decades;
those rules do include moderation (and the procedures for making a group
moderated), but they do not include registration requirements. You have
zero hope of changing that. The rules probably even cover how to change
the rules. I didn't bother to check; not worth my time; ain't gonna
happen. Check yourself if you care; no I don't have a citation on
exactly where to check. I could find it, but that's also not worth my
time.
If you are talking about setting up some different forum, then that's
another matter - one that gets discussed here every time the subject of
spam is raised by the person who usually raises it. In fact, there exist
other forums, the most widely used of which was already mentioned in
this thread. Feel free to join that if you like. I used to be a member,
though I haven't been for several years as I prefer the newsgroup
format. I think it was when I retired that I dropped that one; I had
done it through work, but decided no to resubscribe with my home email.
Then there are a few others that pretty much never get used such as the
_fortran one (or something like that).
I've never once posted to the gg95 google group, although I've glanced
at it on rare occasion and sometimes felt I could have given a good
answer to some question on it. The registration requirement is what kept
me from answering. I don't do google groups; I don't trust them with a
working email address (speaking of spam). I suppose I could set up a
separate working email just for the purpose, but I'm not inclined to
bother.
Daniel Carrera
"big 8"?
> Rules and procedures for them have been in place for over 3 decades;
Wow.
> If you are talking about setting up some different forum, then that's
> another matter
It was just idle chatter. I have no intention of either moderating, or
suggesting a new forum. Like everyone else here, I have a life :-)
Daniel.
Richard Maine
> On 04/19/2011 09:27 PM, Richard Maine wrote:
> > Daniel Carrera<dan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Except that newsgroups don't work that way. This is a "big 8" newsgroup.
>
> "big 8"?
Used to be the "big 7". comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk. Later
humanities got added. (I had to look up the exact list; didn't recall it
exactly). See the wikipedia article "Big 8 (Usenet)", along with its
link to "the Great Renaming" of 1987. Oops, I was off by a decade in my
prior post; happens at my age. :-( For some reason, I was thinking it
was around 1980 that I started reading comp.lang.fortran, but that was
just a "brain fart" (to use the technical term). It was really 1990.
Those are the "official" heirarchies that have established rules on how
they are created and maintained. Others, anyone can pretty much create
at random to the extent that you can talk any particular news server
into accepting them.
dpb
But, it's always worthwhile to have a basic understanding...
Everything you'd want to know (and links to even more)... :)
<http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/big8-group-management/>
--
robin
Probably both.
Daniel Carrera
> Daniel Carrera<dan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "big 8"?
>
> Used to be the "big 7". comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk. Later
> humanities got added. (I had to look up the exact list; didn't recall it
> exactly). See the wikipedia article "Big 8 (Usenet)", along with its
> link to "the Great Renaming" of 1987.
Very interesting. I wasn't aware of the Great Renaming. I sort of
assumed that the standard hierarchies "big 7/8" had been around more or
less from the start.
In fact, save for alt.*, I didn't even know that there were other
possible hierarchies. I certainly don't know of any. In fact, I didn't
even know of soc.*, talk.* and humanities.*.
> Those are the "official" heirarchies that have established rules on how
> they are created and maintained. Others, anyone can pretty much create
> at random to the extent that you can talk any particular news server
> into accepting them.
Ok.
Daniel.
Daniel H
I agree. It's not nice to say and might be contentious, but maybe having
a little technical hurdle keeps the Fortran-related posts to a moderate
number. In other words, if there were no 'entry costs' of setting up
(again, they are very small), then maybe this group would get many more
unqualified questions, leaving less room to go in depth with the
interesting ones. Note that I am quite a non-technical newbie myself.
My totally standard, unmodified eternal-september setup shows acceptable
levels of spam: From April 1st to April 19th, I counted 480 posts on
clf, out of which 21 were spam. While this is surely a
non-representative sample, those numbers mean about 4.4% spam and an
average of 25 posts per day.
Since I am at it: the value I draw from this group is immensely higher
than the combined cost of setup and remaining spam. Thanks guys!
Daniel (Harenberg)
Daniel Carrera
> I agree. It's not nice to say and might be contentious, but maybe having
> a little technical hurdle keeps the Fortran-related posts to a moderate
> number. In other words, if there were no 'entry costs' of setting up
> (again, they are very small), then maybe this group would get many more
> unqualified questions, leaving less room to go in depth with the
> interesting ones. Note that I am quite a non-technical newbie myself.
I think that questions from "unqualified" people have just as much merit
and as much right to be asked. Every expert in this forum was a newbie
once, without exception. For everyone here, there was a time when you
didn't know how to write "hello world" in Fortran, there was a time when
you didn't know what the internet was, and there was a time when you
didn't know what Usenet was.
I would argue that newbies need help the most, and since every Fortran
user was once a newbie, I see no sense in having a technical barrier for
no reason other than it being a barrier.
Daniel.
Daniel H
I knew this would be contentious...
I didn't say unqualified 'people', but questions. And I consider myself
still a newbie as I said. All I thought was that - if there is no cost
in asking - this group would see an increase in questions like how to
write 'hello world'. While that is something everyone has asked at some
point, maybe it would be more efficient if that was looked up in an
appropriate book or on Google, which some people might be incentivized
to do if asking is at least a bit costly.
But I might be totally wrong, and actually when I tried to join this
group not long ago I also proposed changing it to a moderated group or
the like, so that one wouldn't need to take this small hurdle. I
appreciate your opinion on this, because it tells me that my main fear,
namely that frequent contributors like you would be annoyed and leave,
was quite off the mark.
Sebastian Rooks
<sturla...@yahoo.no> wrote:
>Is there another Fortran forum that can be recommended?
>
>I for my part is done with comp.lang.fortran due to all the spam.
>
>
>
>
>
Either get a decent newsreader, as many here suggest (and this was a
rule even before Google groups came about) or try using some of the
web ones - stackoverflow.com for example. Although this is still "the
place" there are some rather knowledgeable people in there as well.
Compilers forums (for example, Intel's) are also a place to seek
information.
David W Noon
Hash: SHA1
On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:42:48 +0200, Daniel Carrera wrote about Re:
Another Fortran forum (without the spam)?:
[snip]
>merit and as much right to be asked.
install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are not
ready to write software.
This newsgroup is intended for programmers, new and experienced. But
programming demands a certain amount of technical expertise, above and
beyond that of installing and configuring software. So, anybody who
finds installing, say, Thunderbird and configuring its network
connections and spam filters to be too complicated, is not really ready
to develop new code in FORTRAN (or any other language).
- --
Regards,
Dave [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwn...@spamtrap.ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
Remove spam trap to reply by e-mail.
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Arjan
> install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are not
> ready to write software.
I don't care if CLF-members are qualified to write software,
as long as they can help me out.
Even after having filtered out spam, you will see that the
number of discussions on CLF about Fortran declines severely.
The explosion of spam via Google has decimated the number of
discussions on CLF that I find useful.
This refutes the above proposition.
Spam does be an issue.
Ignoring its impact is ignoring the demise of CLF.
Which is a pity.
A.
dpb
...
> I don't care if CLF-members are qualified to write software,
> as long as they can help me out.
Seems a little unlikely to get much help in Fortran from somebody who's
not qualified, but... :)
I'm not at all sure how much of the traffic in clf is related to spam
deterring useful participants as opposed to simply the trend towards
web-based forums instead of usenet for most newbies.
The old f--s who've been around since forever aren't going anywhere
except retirement and the newbies in general aren't givers as much as
takers.
How has the trend in the C groups been? Is it steady and/or increasing?
Is there any less of an issue of spam there than in clf?
The only other programming group I monitor at all is the Matlab
one--it's quite active. New folks find it all the time from either
Google or the TMW portal; totally unfiltered I know it also is loaded w/
the same kind of spam in high volume. It just doesn't really seem to me
that the spam itself is a major factor in the usage; the students still
show up in droves at Google because there are large numbers of them in
uni classes; Fortran "not so much".
--
--
Erik Toussaint
Stackoverflow.com is nice, but it's by design a Q&A place. Questions get
asked, and as soon as the OP gets an answer to his satisfaction, the
topic is basically dropped.
I enjoy reading the often elongated discussions here in c.l.f., that can
deeply analyze an issue from different perspectives; sometimes much
deeper than the OP anticipated or required.
I find most web-based forums slow and cumbersome to navigate. In my
opinion, as of yet, still nothing trumps the speed and user-friendliness
of Usenet.
Erik.
David W Noon
Hash: SHA1
>> install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are
>> not ready to write software.
>
>
>I don't care if CLF-members are qualified to write software,
>as long as they can help me out.
providers of the best advice will usually be the better programmers.
>Even after having filtered out spam, you will see that the
>number of discussions on CLF about Fortran declines severely.
here originates from 2 regular participants of this newsgroup: one of
them writes messages about any load of old cobblers that is passing
through his mind at the time; the other one writes complaints about the
volume of spam in the newsgroup, in spite of having been given much
advice on how to avoid that spam.
>The explosion of spam via Google has decimated the number of
>discussions on CLF that I find useful.
has been offered to the other plaintiffs about spam, you would see as
little of it as I do.
>This refutes the above proposition.
>Spam does be an issue.
>Ignoring its impact is ignoring the demise of CLF.
>Which is a pity.
Since you are using Google Groups, you will be inundated with all the
spam that is inserted by gmail.com or googlemail.com accounts, because
Google does not filter its own insertions. If you used a sensible NNTP
server with the appropriate filters, either on the server or on your
newsreader, you would see virtually no spam.
Regards,
Dave [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwn...@spamtrap.ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
Remove spam trap to reply by e-mail.
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Daniel Carrera
> I think the most direct (or bluntest) reply to this is: if you cannot
> install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are not
> ready to write software.
>
> This newsgroup is intended for programmers, new and experienced. But
> programming demands a certain amount of technical expertise, above and
> beyond that of installing and configuring software.
I disagree. Strongly. I do not think that experience with Usenet or
Thunderbird is a pre-requisite for implementing Newton's method for your
class. I do not think that Newton's method is more complicated than
configuring spam filters, which somehow I cannot seem to get working in
Thunderbird.
You might think that setting up spam filters is very easy. Well,
honestly I have not managed to do it. The Junk options are greyed out
and for the life of me I cannot find a way to turn them on. Yet,
somehow, I have managed to write a lot of software well beyond the
newbie level. Heck, I even managed to get paid for full time programming
for 6 years. Fancy that.
Daniel.
Daniel Carrera
> Since you are using Google Groups, you will be inundated with all the
> spam that is inserted by gmail.com or googlemail.com accounts, because
> Google does not filter its own insertions. If you used a sensible NNTP
> server with the appropriate filters, either on the server or on your
> newsreader, you would see virtually no spam.
Things I had to learn before making CLF usable:
1) That Google groups is not a "recommended" way to use CLF.
2) What an NNTP server is and why you need one.
3) That some NNTP servers filter out spam, in contrast with how mailing
lists work.
4) I had to try a number of news readers and find that most of the ones
I found were a piece of crap that made it difficult to do the most
elementary things such as deleting posts.
5) I had to learn why in this forum people don't like it if you say
"delete a post" and instead should say "ignore a thread", even though it
is in practice the same thing you do with email (when you "delete" an
email from your Inbox, you don't remove it from the server either).
6) Eventually I had to ask people to recommend both an NNTP server and a
client.
Things I have yet to learn:
7) How to get freakin Thunderbird to flag some posts as Junk and
automatically delete/ignore/kill/nuke them. I keep hearing in this
thread that it is so easy to setup filters... well, I must be an idiot
then because my Junk options on Tbird are greyed out when I go to CLF
and I cannot find any way to turn them on.
Look, nobody is born with all this knowledge. Nobody arrives to Usenet
for the first time with this knowledge already acquired. None of this
knowledge is required for writing useful programs like Newton's method
or a simple N-body simulation.
Therefore, to say that people who do not already have this information
do not deserve to ask their question about Newtons method here, is just
silly and wrong.
Daniel.
dpb
...
> 7) How to get freakin Thunderbird to flag some posts as Junk and
> automatically delete/ignore/kill/nuke them. I keep hearing in this
> thread that it is so easy to setup filters... well, I must be an idiot
> then because my Junk options on Tbird are greyed out when I go to CLF
> and I cannot find any way to turn them on.
...
Easiest is if on a spam message under the "Message" menu use the "Create
Filter from Message" option.
There's a "Message Filters" selection under "Tools" or if focus is on
the server account there's a link in the "Advanced" section of "Manage
Message Filters"
I've not tried the self-learning junk classification; a few simple
filters has been sufficient for my satisfaction.
The only thing I've had trouble with w/ the last incarnation of T'bird
is that if have more than one newsserver, it seems that the filter setup
menu has a problem that selecting an alternate server for managing
filters ends up reverting to the original one. I think this is a
bug...whether it's been reported or not I don't know.
--
Daniel Carrera
> Easiest is if on a spam message under the "Message" menu use the "Create
> Filter from Message" option.
>
> There's a "Message Filters" selection under "Tools" or if focus is on
> the server account there's a link in the "Advanced" section of "Manage
> Message Filters"
>
> I've not tried the self-learning junk classification; a few simple
> filters has been sufficient for my satisfaction.
Thanks. I'll do that. I didn't think something like that would help
because, AFAICT, you'd only get to block one individual, rather than a
general category of spam.
Daniel.
dpb
...
> Thanks. I'll do that. I didn't think something like that would help
> because, AFAICT, you'd only get to block one individual, rather than a
> general category of spam.
...
Live dangerously; explore the possibilities... :)
If set a specific address as the filter, of course, that's true. That's
not the only choice, however.
--
dpb
...
> Note: not meant as a backdoor insult to all the legit gmail.com'ers out there
That would be both of 'em? :)
I've not resorted to quite that blanket a denial; there are the
occasional posts that are legit.
A couple message title keywords seem to get 90% of the pharamceuticals
in the current barrage ("Buy" being one key one) in my most rudimentary
of filters.
I'm still curious why clf seems to let thru a lot that are filtered from
other groups on the newsservers I frequent, though. Seems most peculiar.
--
David W Noon
Hash: SHA1
Another Fortran forum (without the spam)?:
>> I think the most direct (or bluntest) reply to this is: if you cannot
>> install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are
>> not ready to write software.
>>
>> This newsgroup is intended for programmers, new and experienced. But
>> programming demands a certain amount of technical expertise, above
>> and beyond that of installing and configuring software.
>
>I disagree. Strongly. I do not think that experience with Usenet or
>Thunderbird is a pre-requisite for implementing Newton's method for
>your class. I do not think that Newton's method is more complicated
>than configuring spam filters, which somehow I cannot seem to get
>working in Thunderbird.
demands of software development. Secondly, Newton-Raphson is more
complicated than configuring spam filters, even the regex-based filters
I published in this newsgroup yesterday. [Many older programmers will
say that writing regexes will boil your brain, but they are not as
difficult as writing code from scratch.] Each of those filters cleans
out potentially many messages in one fell swoop, and all but one of them
displays on a single line; they are all one line long, but one of them
is a rather long line that wraps. I have yet to see an implementation
of Newton-Raphson that fits into a single statement; a sound
convergence test is, on its own, more complicated than configuring spam
filters.
>You might think that setting up spam filters is very easy. Well,
>honestly I have not managed to do it. The Junk options are greyed out
>and for the life of me I cannot find a way to turn them on.
Thunderbird. I suspect you are trying to use e-mail options for news.
Regards,
Dave [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwn...@spamtrap.ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
Remove spam trap to reply by e-mail.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux)
x1QAn1jIDeT53OZ01iJ8SbHh31W4CTgs
=nSz4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
baf
1. select c.l.fortran in thunderbird
2. click tools/message filters
3. click new
4. name the filter and then pick some filter subject or sender words
used to trigger the filter
5. For "Perform these actions", select "ignore this thread"
6. click OK
7. click the "enable" checkbox for this filter
Now, each time you download message headers, threads containing those
filter subject words or are from the sender you are filtering will not
be displayed.
If you filter on sender=gmail, you will get rid of all spam.
Unfortunately, you will also get rid of your own messages!
Steve Lionel
> Either get a decent newsreader, as many here suggest (and this was a
> rule even before Google groups came about) or try using some of the
> web ones - stackoverflow.com for example.
There's a third option, which I and others have mentioned. Select any
newsreader application (I use Thunderbird) and a news server that does
good spam filtering. No arcane knowledge required, though it may cost
you a pizza per year in fees. Set it up once and you're good to go.
--
Steve Lionel
Developer Products Division
Intel Corporation
Merrimack, NH
For email address, replace "invalid" with "com"
User communities for Intel Software Development Products
http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/
Intel Software Development Products Support
http://software.intel.com/sites/support/
My Fortran blog
http://www.intel.com/software/drfortran
Refer to http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice
for more information regarding performance and optimization choices in
Intel software products.
Richard Maine
> On 4/20/2011 12:42 PM, Paul van Delst wrote:
> ...
> > Note: not meant as a backdoor insult to all the legit gmail.com'ers out
there
>
> That would be both of 'em? :)
I've got a gmail account. It just isn't my main one; in fact I barely
ever use it and its definitely not one I'd put on a news posting.
gmail-unlp
Well, I tend to use web applications so in this case that implies I
don't have to know about NNTP server, NNTP client (or reader), etc.
(which I'm not aware of, of course) and I do not have to set all of
that stuff in every computer I use. And I use googlegroups (shame on
me!) because I'm usually logued in gmail (yes, I'm not popular here at
clf...) and, thus, I just open another tab in my browser and read and
sometimes post in clf... Also, I don't like Mozilla and I don't like
Thunderbird... How do I get rid of spam? Since I use Chrome, I
installed a so called "extension", which is nothing more than a .js
which "filters" most of the spam (I didn't check, but I think I see
one or two spams every day and I'm too lazy to change/add some
specific words in the .js to get rid of them too). The link to the .js
is in another thread we have seen these days. If you do not like to
install/use Chrome, I think Mozilla "accepts" those kind of
"extensions" too, but I didn't check. If you do not want to know about
extensions and/or how to use them in Mozilla, well, follow the
standard way: NNTP server and NNTP client and set filters. Either way,
we have some little extra effort beyond asking, and I think it's worth
the knowledge we have in the replies we receive. As programmers and/or
problem solvers in general I think this does not bother us, it's a
challenge I enjoy, in some way, just like when I learned about that a
few lines in a .js "cleans" almost every spam.
And I save my pizza per year as a collateral result...
Fernando.
Gordon Sande
> dpb <no...@non.net> wrote:
>
>> On 4/20/2011 12:42 PM, Paul van Delst wrote:
>> ...
>>> Note: not meant as a backdoor insult to all the legit gmail.com'ers out
> there
>>
>> That would be both of 'em? :)
>
> I've got a gmail account. It just isn't my main one; in fact I barely
> ever use it and its definitely not one I'd put on a news posting.
A clear name on gmail makes it easy for some folks to find you. I have
some number of papers and such with an old eamil address so I signed up
for a variety of public emails sources to make it easy for others. There
are some folks who I have found that way so it does work.
Watch out for anon134@gmail and its friends!
Ken Fairfield
[...]
> Things I have yet to learn:
>
> 7) How to get freakin Thunderbird to flag some posts as Junk and
> automatically delete/ignore/kill/nuke them. I keep hearing in this
> thread that it is so easy to setup filters... well, I must be an idiot
> then because my Junk options on Tbird are greyed out when I go to CLF
> and I cannot find any way to turn them on.
Caveat: it's been several years since I've used T-Bird
regularly, so things may have changed a bit...
1) I'd recommend erasing the ideas you have of
"mail" when thinking about usenet. Rarely are
articles stored on your usenet client machine.
That's why the idea of "deleting messages" or
junking them doesn't get you very far. The
articles are stored on the nntp server machine
and only sent to your nntp client when you go
to read them.
2) My T-Bird habit was to use Read/New. You
can easily setup filters that mark messages from
individual users (spammers) as "read". Then you
don't see them at all when you Read/New.
3) Similarly, for any new thread you stumble upon
that is spam, you can mark it as "read".
I happen to agree that it would be nicer not to
see the articles that you're filtering at all, but
the above gets you pretty far along (or at least,
it worked well enough for me :-).
-Ken
dpb
Indeed...
I've also got a gmail account primarily for the bit bucket of
registration where need genuine account but don't want the reference to
the "real" one and for the occasional other odd use.
For Richard, the smiley _was_ intended; it was just a wisecrack... :)
--
Daniel Carrera
>
>> Note: not meant as a backdoor insult to all the legit gmail.com'ers
>> out there
>
> That would be both of 'em? :)
>
> I've not resorted to quite that blanket a denial; there are the
> occasional posts that are legit.
My email address is @gmail.com.
Daniel.
Daniel Carrera
> On 04/20/2011 09:20 AM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>
> 1. select c.l.fortran in thunderbird
> 2. click tools/message filters
> 3. click new
> 4. name the filter and then pick some filter subject or sender words
> used to trigger the filter
> 5. For "Perform these actions", select "ignore this thread"
> 6. click OK
> 7. click the "enable" checkbox for this filter
Ok. So you don't use the Bayesian spam filter. I'm feeling slightly dumb
because I could/should have come up with the manual option on my own.
Maybe I got used to Bayesian filters. Next time I see spam I'll look for
key words in the subject and start setting up my filters.
On the other hand, I guess that in a sense I have proven than even a
professional programmer can stumble on the spam filter, so it should not
be a shock if other others do too.
> If you filter on sender=gmail, you will get rid of all spam.
> Unfortunately, you will also get rid of your own messages!
:-)
Daniel.
Gib Bogle
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:42:48 +0200, Daniel Carrera wrote about Re:
> Another Fortran forum (without the spam)?:
>
> [snip]
>> I think that questions from "unqualified" people have just as much
>> merit and as much right to be asked.
>
> I think the most direct (or bluntest) reply to this is: if you cannot
> install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are not
> ready to write software.
You are blunter than me. Congratulations! ;-)
Terence
(snipped)
> I switched to eternal-september after my ISP dropped newsgroups. The
> spam level stayed about the same, namely not much. (Except for the
> persistant complainer who continues on about googlegroups but refuses
> to switch. Yes I am feeding the troll. Sorry.)
>
> The small amount of spam in c.l.f seems to be short bursts of online
> drug sales. Interestingly there seems little of it in other groups.
> Another group seems to have a moderate traffic of instructors manuals.
> I do not bother with filters or killfiles (except for one total idiot
> in another group - at least he is polite even if totally out to lunch).
I get the hint Gordon, but am not a troll.!!
Via Google, there are NOT 'short bursts' of adverts but 3 or more 30-
item pages per Fortran topic. That alone is 99% spam. How can a
Fortran beginner, pointed to Google Forums, via Google itself,
understand he has to fish through 3 pages of pharamceutical offers per
possible item of Fortran interest, before posting his/her enquiry?
I CAN see c-l-f via a filtered newsfeed-type access, BUT I CANNOT POST
except via Google!
And I CANNOT use my paid braordband service to subroutine its way to
Usenet.
So I have to
a) complain, hoping something will change (e.g.the Forum locus),
b) live with it otherwise,
c) point out that the Forum Fortran_ IS MODERATED and founded by a
notable contributor and one of the delegated impartial moderators is
myself! So there is NO spam, but unfortunately, few postings.
I can't say I was at the IBM birth ('56), only the christening of
Fortran ('60), but don't want to be at the death by suffocation.
Terence
(alias Oldtimer)
Terence
(Quote)
> I noticed the same pattern -- wondered why clf appears different;
> presumed it was owing to less overall traffic that it hasn't seen the
> attention of other groups at the server but it would also seem that all
> the filtering would be automagic so 'tis a puzzle why don't see the same
> bursts on other groups...
Because of the c-l-f membership figures (used to be one of the
highest).
The advertisers tell the paid spammers where thay must post.
Terence
wrote:
> When my news reader first downloads the headers, it tells me how
> many total unread messages there are. Then when I open the news
> group window it applies the filters and only shows the subject lines
> that pass the filters. So I don't see any of the filtered posts,
> but I do get an idea about how many such posts there are. The last
> few days it seems like there are 50/day or so that get filtered out.
> There are only about 10 legit posts per day in c.l.f, so the signal
> to noise ratio has been pretty bad lately.
>
That's a good filter Ron!
But the figure of signal to noise ratio is under 1% and dropped to
0.3% on my last physical count of several days.
dpb
Finding that hard to believe (clf activity ever ranking very high in the
overall scheme of usenet at least since spamming has been an in thing)...
--
Daniel Carrera
>> I disagree. Strongly. I do not think that experience with Usenet or
>> Thunderbird is a pre-requisite for implementing Newton's method for
>> your class. I do not think that Newton's method is more complicated
>> than configuring spam filters, which somehow I cannot seem to get
>> working in Thunderbird.
>
> Firstly, Newton's algorithm is hardly a benchmark for the intellectual
> demands of software development.
I think you've missed the point. You said that programming requires more
expertise than configuring software. I gave an example of a very simple
but very useful algorithm that makes perfect sense to implement in
software. It is an algorithm that students regular see in their
homework, and is used to solve real problems.
Of course it is not a "benchmark of the intellectual demands of software
development". Why does it have to be? Are only professional developers
allowed to ask questions in this forum? I say that it is perfectly
legitimate for a student who just learned Newton's method at school to
implement it for a class project and ask a question in this forum.
> Secondly, Newton-Raphson is more
> complicated than configuring spam filters, even the regex-based filters
> I published in this newsgroup yesterday. [Many older programmers will
> say that writing regexes will boil your brain, but they are not as
> difficult as writing code from scratch.]
I disagree. Newton's method is simple and straight forward. In any case,
there are several other even simpler methods that are useful and people
learn in school. Numerical integration like Simpson's method, or simple
methods for solving ODEs.
I think you vastly underestimate the possible difficulty of reading this
forum without spam. There is more to it than learning basic Regexes. I
gave a list in another post. I had to learn about NNTP servers, how
Usenet is different for mailing lists, I had to try several clients and
get frustrated at each one for not working properly, not connecting, or
not letting me eliminate all the spam. In the end I gave up and sent a
post here asking for advice on choosing a server and a client. That's
when I moved to Eternal + Thunderbird. That helped, but I still cannot
get the freakin Junk controls in Thunderbird to run. Put it all
together, and it is a fair bit more than explaining what a regex is.
>> You might think that setting up spam filters is very easy. Well,
>> honestly I have not managed to do it. The Junk options are greyed out
>> and for the life of me I cannot find a way to turn them on.
>
> Well, that is possibly an issue with the nomenclature used by
> Thunderbird. I suspect you are trying to use e-mail options for news.
If that is the case, it would testify to the non-triviality of getting
Thunderbird to nuke spam the way I think it should. I should mention
that Thunderbird has worked better than the other readers I tried before.
Daniel.
Terence
> I also have used individual.net for several years and am quite happy
> with it. My experience is like Richard's - I see almost no spam in the
> newsgroup, but do see the same people spamming the forum over and over
> with complaints about spam, seemingly oblivious to the numerous
> resolutions offered, and wanting everyone else to change what they do
> instead.
Steve, you like many Americans think that the way it is in USA
applies to the rest of the world. And you probably have a variaty of
choices of services.
My previous country of residenc had one single source of TV, of Phone
lines and e-mail access.
Even here in in Australia, there is essentially only one digital
signal transporter and three or four retailers of the service. We may
now be going to apply censorship. Thin end of the wedge?
Some countries already filter out specific sources (e.g. Google and
Yahoo) at the nation's (possibly only) international dish or cable
landfall. But I don't have a newsfeed service ability, as you
understand it, in my package. Yes, I can filter in my filterable
service, but I cannot post without using a browser, and that means at
that point I get to see the spam and have to search for the item I
want to respond to that I saw unfiltered.
Get it?
Terence
> > I think the most direct (or bluntest) reply to this is: if you cannot
> > install a newsreader and configure its filtering mechanisms, you are not
> > ready to write software.
>
> as long as they can help me out.
> number of discussions on CLF about Fortran declines severely.
> discussions on CLF that I find useful.
> Ignoring its impact is ignoring the demise of CLF.
> Which is a pity.
>
Hurrah for logic!
I wish more would understand this point!
Checking the statistics of Google, counts the spam, unfortunately.
You have to keep the fitered postings as I do and COUNT THEM per month
or year.
The spam itself is causing more advertisers to post more spam becaues
of the perceived posting rates!!!
Richard Maine
> On 4/20/2011 6:12 PM, Terence wrote:
> > On Apr 19, 11:39 pm, dpb<n...@non.net> wrote:
> > Because of the c-l-f membership figures (used to be one of the
> > highest).
>
> Finding that hard to believe (clf activity ever ranking very high in the
> overall scheme of usenet at least since spamming has been an in thing)...
Particularly since "membership" isn't even a meaningful concept for
newsgroups. There is literally no way for anyone to determine how many
people read clf. I have no idea where these alleged figures would come
from but I do know that they can't be accurate.
Terence
Google counts the items posted per month; NOT the readership.
I thought that was clear.
The advertisers (and Market Research was my VERY successful business
(1972-2008) use what they can, and postings and responses imply a much
higher readership. You can even estimate the redership if you collect
postings, and remove spam, and count names of contributors over some
years. Some 'faithful' soul will eventually post and be counted.
Richard Maine
> On Apr 20, 3:24 am, Steve Lionel <steve.lio...@intel.invalid> wrote:
>
> > I also have used individual.net for several years
> Steve, you like many Americans think that the way it is in USA
> applies to the rest of the world. And you probably have a variaty of
> choices of services.
Don't assume that just because I Iive in the USA, that means I
necessarily use a USA-based usenet server. I don't. Individual.net is
European. As has been noted many times before, one does not have to
depend on what one's particular ISP, or even country, offers. Neither my
ISP nor my country have anything to do with individual.net; they don't
need to. It would require pretty active blocking to prevent access to
it. Even if your ISP is so obnoxious as to block the standard NNTP port
(119), individual supports several alternatives, including port 80 (the
standard web port). You have that available unless someone is very
specifically blocking individual.net as a special case. Your ISP doesn't
have to provide the service - just not deliberately block it.
Richard Maine
> On Apr 21, 9:32 am, nos...@see.signature (Richard Maine) wrote:
> > > On 4/20/2011 6:12 PM, Terence wrote:
> > > > On Apr 19, 11:39 pm, dpb<n...@non.net> wrote:
> > > > Because of the c-l-f membership figures (used to be one of the
> > > > highest).
> > "membership" isn't even a meaningful concept for
> > newsgroups.
..
> Google counts the items posted per month; NOT the readership.
> I thought that was clear.
Apparently not to all of us. I don't actually go around trying to
research what unspecified statistics you might be referring to. I just
read the words as posted. When you use the word "membership" (your exact
word), that sure doesn't translate to "items posted" to me.
gmail-unlp
[a lot snipped]
> Yes, I can filter in my filterable
> service, but I cannot post without using a browser, and that means at
> that point I get to see the spam and have to search for the item I
> want to respond to that I saw unfiltered.
>
> Get it?
Did you see one of my previous posts? Following the steps:
1) Install Chrome
2) Intall a little Chrome "extension" (a .js file for which I sent the
URL and there are other sources you can find via google)
3) Use a gmail account and join the corresponding google group - clf
That's it. No NNTP, no news reader, basically without spam, and read
and respond using a single web browser, Chrome. You may tell me you do
not like/want to follow any or all of the steps, but I think you are
asking me and all of the clf "users" (I don't know the right word for
us, readers and posters...) to use another forum/newsgroup/etc. Do you
see the difference? One a few should change their way of accessing clf
or every body should change for those few. Ok, I'm guessing now you
will reply that newbies are a lot... I don't know how many we are, I
didn't count ;) ... but we newbies have grew up with spam, and we
survived, and, as newbies we are we have a lot to learn, including
Fortran and how to get rid of spam and Fortran (a looooooot more about
Fortran in my case). Furthermore, as a newbie I am, I sort of enjoy
this, as I posted before.
Fernando.
Gary L. Scott
> On 4/20/2011 11:31 AM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> ...
>
>> automatically delete/ignore/kill/nuke them. I keep hearing in this
>> thread that it is so easy to setup filters... well, I must be an idiot
>> then because my Junk options on Tbird are greyed out when I go to CLF
> ...
>
> Easiest is if on a spam message under the "Message" menu use the "Create
> Filter from Message" option.
>
> There's a "Message Filters" selection under "Tools" or if focus is on
> the server account there's a link in the "Advanced" section of "Manage
> Message Filters"
>
> I've not tried the self-learning junk classification; a few simple
> filters has been sufficient for my satisfaction.
>
> The only thing I've had trouble with w/ the last incarnation of T'bird
> is that if have more than one newsserver, it seems that the filter setup
> menu has a problem that selecting an alternate server for managing
> filters ends up reverting to the original one. I think this is a
> bug...whether it's been reported or not I don't know.
>
> --
That sounds only slightly counter intuitive. Filters are usually used
to define what to INCLUDE. In this case, we want to define what to EXCLUDE.
Gordon Sande
> On Apr 19, 10:52 pm, Gordon Sande <Gordon.Sa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (snipped)
>> I switched to eternal-september after my ISP dropped newsgroups. The
>> spam level stayed about the same, namely not much. (Except for the
>> persistant complainer who continues on about googlegroups but refuses
>> to switch. Yes I am feeding the troll. Sorry.)
>>
>> The small amount of spam in c.l.f seems to be short bursts of online
>> drug sales. Interestingly there seems little of it in other groups.
>> Another group seems to have a moderate traffic of instructors manuals.
>> I do not bother with filters or killfiles (except for one total idiot
>> in another group - at least he is polite even if totally out to lunch).
>
> I get the hint Gordon, but am not a troll.!!
>
> Via Google, there are NOT 'short bursts' of adverts but 3 or more 30-
> item pages per Fortran topic. That alone is 99% spam. How can a
> Fortran beginner, pointed to Google Forums, via Google itself,
> understand he has to fish through 3 pages of pharamceutical offers per
> possible item of Fortran interest, before posting his/her enquiry?
> I CAN see c-l-f via a filtered newsfeed-type access, BUT I CANNOT POST
> except via Google!
Are you claiming that you can not use your internet connection to access
a service like eternal-september.org (which I believe is in Germany) which
would permit both reading and posting? Last time I knew Australia was still
a free country. Or is the claim that you are behind such a tight
institutional firewall that you are restricted to exactly and only google?
The claim that you can only post through google is not credible.
Earlier the claim was that the tech support of your ISP was so bad that
it did not have any clue what usenet was. Just like almost all ISPs!
Or that your local PC whitebox store did not have any boxed Fortran
compilers on display. Just like almost every other PC store on the planet!
The majority of folks an c.l.f have the technical ability to recognize that
usenet can be gotten by other than through the recipe provided by their
ISP. And that software is available through channels other that the local
PC storefront. For someone who quotes your breadth of experience and ability
such alternate means should be trivial to find and use. Many do not have the
patience to sort through the nonexistant documentation of how to configure
some open source newsreaders. I am one of those which is why I paid about
$30 to get a commercial product, which several others also appear to use.
And it was not for sale at the local PC storefront.
I would like to believe that you have gotten the hint but only behavior will
prove whether that is true. The history suggests otherwise. I notice that
I appear to not be the only sceptic.
dpb
> Terence<tbwr...@cantv.net> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 21, 9:32 am, nos...@see.signature (Richard Maine) wrote:
>>>> On 4/20/2011 6:12 PM, Terence wrote:
>>>>> On Apr 19, 11:39 pm, dpb<n...@non.net> wrote:
>>>>> Because of the c-l-f membership figures (used to be one of the
>>>>> highest).
>
>>> "membership" isn't even a meaningful concept for
>>> newsgroups.
> ..
>> Google counts the items posted per month; NOT the readership.
>> I thought that was clear.
>
> Apparently not to all of us. I don't actually go around trying to
> research what unspecified statistics you might be referring to. I just
> read the words as posted. When you use the word "membership" (your exact
> word), that sure doesn't translate to "items posted" to me.
And I still doubt clf was ever very high at all in the activity of
overall usenet postings since long before google even existed.
All in all, it doesn't seem likely scenario to me, anyway.
But, it doesn't actually address directly the phenomenon I mentioned re:
clf and the amount of spam seen as compared to other newsgroups I
monitor from a given newsserver--if I look at the totals on an
unfiltered site like google, the absolute numbers are similar (and in
fact I see many of the identical spam postings from the same 'bot) but
they're more effectively filtered in other groups than in clf. _That_ I
find peculiar that different filtering seems to be active elsewhere than
in clf.
If anything, I would think that would point to the lower traffic rate of
clf as being such that it doesn't get the attention other groups do from
the server admin's but then I'm back to the puzzle of why it wouldn't
all be automagic w/ no external intervention at all. 'Tis still a puzzle...
--
dpb
...
> That sounds only slightly counter intuitive. Filters are usually used to
> define what to INCLUDE. In this case, we want to define what to EXCLUDE.
I don't know, a lowpass filter is designed to exclude frequencies higher
than the cutoff...seems perfectly consistent to me. :)
I haven't yet exactly figured out what's happening in the interface and
I've not tried too hard--I should delete the other newsserver account
temporarily and see if the behavior is consistent again w/ the other
one, then try to add the original one back and see if can get the
filters active on each. If that fails, then I'll be convinced it is a
bug, not user error. At the present I'm not quite sure that I haven't
somehow just tried to use the interface differently than it was intended
(altho I don't see an alternative doesn't mean there isn't one).
--
dpb
...
> The spam itself is causing more advertisers to post more spam becaues
> of the perceived posting rates!!!
Nonsense; the other groups w/ much higher active usage should therefore
have many times more spam than clf and approach the same signal:noise
ratio and clf should see a cessation of spam activity in comparison as
its overall traffic really isn't very high.
--
gmail-unlp
> On Apr 21, 12:29 am, Arjan <arjan.van.d...@rivm.nl> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
[snip]
> > Spam does be an issue.
> > Ignoring its impact is ignoring the demise of CLF.
> > Which is a pity.
>
> > A.
>
> Hurrah for logic!
This is funny for me. I tend to think along this line:
if the demise of CLF is real and such demise is somehow produced by
the spam then CLF was meant to demise independently of spam.
but maybe I have the wrong logic...
Fernando.
[snip again]
Sebastian Rooks
Maine) wrote:
>Terence <tbwr...@cantv.net> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 21, 9:32 am, nos...@see.signature (Richard Maine) wrote:
>> > > On 4/20/2011 6:12 PM, Terence wrote:
>> > > > On Apr 19, 11:39 pm, dpb<n...@non.net> wrote:
>> > > > Because of the c-l-f membership figures (used to be one of the
>> > > > highest).
>
>> > "membership" isn't even a meaningful concept for
>> > newsgroups.
>..
>> Google counts the items posted per month; NOT the readership.
>> I thought that was clear.
>
>Apparently not to all of us. I don't actually go around trying to
>research what unspecified statistics you might be referring to. I just
>read the words as posted. When you use the word "membership" (your exact
>word), that sure doesn't translate to "items posted" to me.
In his defense, I think that has to do with the meaningful terms that
completely lost its meaning with the introduction of google's
services.
What was once usenet/news "became" in a way google "groups".
news became rss feeds, and usenet became some sort of illegal software
downloading service(?) ...
Since one, if I understood correctly, needs to be a "member" (or
something of a kind) of a group (google group), therefore the term
"membership".
Sebastian
dpb
...
> The only other programming group I monitor at all is the Matlab
> one--it's quite active. New folks find it all the time from either
> Google or the TMW portal; totally unfiltered I know it also is loaded w/
> the same kind of spam in high volume. It just doesn't really seem to me
> that the spam itself is a major factor in the usage; the students still
> show up in droves at Google because there are large numbers of them in
> uni classes; Fortran "not so much".
...
On the subject of longevity and new users in regard to the above --
There are a number of longterm regulars at cs-sm just like the regulars
in clf; a half-dozen perhaps are truly amazing in both number and depth
of their contributions. AFAIK, each of them uses a traditional
newsreader as opposed to the web portal and every time the subject
arises there of moving to alternate forums it has gotten the same
reaction as here.
I've commented before that TMW as a commercial entity that uses the
cs-sm usenet group as an informal support tool (altho it is monitored by
a couple of employees, actual support is through other formal channels)
they have built a custom web interface and also have other forums that
serve a similar purpose (a FAQ Wiki and a question/answer web forum are
two) but cs-sm draws more traffic than the others and most of the
regulars are not contributors to the other venues (and, it appears, vice
versa to at least some extent).
There is no shortage of new questions and first-time posters from both
portals as well as the occasional newsreader client. Clearly the
existence of spam on the Google site doesn't deter these folks; they're
there to ask a new question and very few make any attempt to do anything
else but log in and post so it makes little or no difference to them
what the rest of the subject matter is. We tend to point newbies to the
TMW portal as it appears that replying to a thread in google is either
non-obvious (some say broken) so that a series of new threads that don't
link properly can get very annoying, but that's a side effect; the
posters in general continue to come back until their question is
answered or they're told the question is bogus or "we don't do homework"
so one can't infer that spam is a deterrent to behavior if want/need help.
But, I don't recall but one or two newbies having become regulars over
the last several years; a few will post responses for a little while,
but all drop away with time while the core pretty much remains intact.
There's a large enough group w/ cs-sm that it'll stay around as well as
with the commercial product; clf is smaller group and since commercial
compilers are competing products what forums are supported by the
vendors don't cross-pollinate much nor do any use usenet in a manner as
does TMW.
But, my conclusion still is that the problem of traffic at clf (if one
sees it as a problem) is more related to the predominance of web-based
portals over traditional usenet clients in the mostly newbie population
that would have questions for clf if they knew it existed not that the
existence of spam itself will drive people from using the tool if they
have the question and know there's a support group there. The cs-sm
usage shows that to be so when there is a sizable population of users
irrespective of the google problems but they're made aware of its
existence simply by the preceding classes and the TMW connection.
--
robin
| That sounds only slightly counter intuitive. Filters are usually used
| to define what to INCLUDE. In this case, we want to define what to EXCLUDE.
I think that you have it back-to-front.
A filter is designed to exclude things.
Anyway, that's the way things work in OE.
robin
>Hurrah for logic!
>I wish more would understand this point!
>Checking the statistics of Google, counts the spam, unfortunately.
>You have to keep the fitered postings as I do and COUNT THEM per month
>or year.
>The spam itself is causing more advertisers to post more spam becaues
>of the perceived posting rates!!!
Um, it's the same spammer.