Re-post: Spams in This forum

[Jackie Han]

Your reply went off the original topic, so I created a different title.

Recently, there has been a lot of spam in this forum, most of which go to the spam folder, but a small number of non-spam emails are incorrectly marked as spam. Note: these spam emails happened in the last few days.

Usually, people who post in this forum for the first time need to be manually reviewed. And people who send spam will be banned quickly. So it's not much about spam here, it's more about management issues.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

You can't directly influence Gmail's algorithm outside of your own inbox. Gmail marks these messages as spam because thousands (or millions) of users have been marking spam messages from these groups for years, which has created a strong algorithmical bias. There's no solution currently until a better spam filter is invented that prevents posting spam altogether.

On Thursday, December 21, 2023 at 5:30:17 AM UTC+3 Jackie Han wrote:

This email went into my Gmail spam folder. Just bring it back in case anyone else didn't see it.

PS: recently, there has been a lot of spam in this forum, most of which go to the spam folder, but a small number of non-spam emails are incorrectly marked as spam like this.

Jackie Han

[Jackie Han]

Now, this thread is a new thread on https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions , not in the original thread.

 

[Jackie Han]

Although Google Group is a website, most developers use it as a mailing list. If there is too much spam in this forum, the possibility of false positives increases. Usually, there isn't that much spam here, it's just a bit more lately. That's what I meant.

[wOxxOm]

Everything except the original post was off-topic there, including your messages:

Strictly speaking, it was wrong of me to reply to your off-topic message, but I was sure it would be the end of it.

[wOxxOm]

>  most developers use it as a mailing list

I doubt it until I see the statistics.

[Jackie Han]

My first message is to let other people re-see this email.

My second message is that I hope to start another topic for discussion.

My re-post message corrected the problem with the second message for the website of Google Group, not just for email.

[wOxxOm]

I understand now your rationale, but I still doubt it's useful, because I don't agree with the idea that most people the mailing lists and not the site where they can clearly see the original announcement with your off-topic message followed by mine, equally off-topic.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

I doubt it until I see the statistics.

Here is a data point: I only interact with this group through the website, never through email.

[Jackie Han]

Mailing lists can receive new messages without the need to constantly refresh the website. One of the main uses of Google Group is as a mailing list.

You said:

Gmail marks these messages as spam because thousands (or millions) of users have been marking spam messages from these groups for years

So you should also know that many people use it as a mailing list.

Why did I reply to the original message with my first message? Because in the past, sometimes when I saw a reply message, I realized that the original message was in the spam folder. So I think replying to the message might be able to make it visible to others.

 

[Jackie Han]

Here is a data point: I only interact with this group through the website, never through email.

Single data is meaningless. There must be some people through the website, which even has the number of views.

[wOxxOm]

> So you should also know that many people use it as a mailing list.

No, I meant the notification messages from the site that users receive in their Gmail inbox and mark as spam. This, AFAIK, is what trains Gmail's global algorithm over time when thousands/millions of users do that consistently due to the abundance of spam in these groups.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

Single data is meaningless. There must be some people through the website, which even has the number of views.

Data is better than speculation, which is what you are doing.

[Jackie Han]

AFAIK, is what trains Gmail's global algorithm over time when thousands/millions of users do that consistently due to the abundance of spam in these groups.

Does Gmail disclose the spam algorithms it uses? This may be your assumption.

[Jackie Han]

Data is better than speculation

But you give too little data, just yourself. There are many people in this forum.

[wOxxOm]

> Mailing lists can receive new messages without the need to constantly refresh the website

BTW The site shows the new messages dynamically, at least the replies inside an open thread, but I don't need it anyway as I use the site just once a day usually, unless there's a thread where I actively comment. Not being constantly online is refreshing.

>  Does Gmail disclose the spam algorithms it uses? This may be your assumption.

Well, that's why I added "AFAIK". I vaguely remember some articles about Gmail's or some other site's anti-spam, but anyway, how else would you train the algorithm if not aggregating responses from users all over the world? After all, this is what Google's re-captcha does.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

But you give too little data, just yourself. There are many people in this forum.

You insist in speculating. You don't know how many people read this group. And you don't know if they read on their email account or the website.

Please stop using the words "most" and "many".

[Jackie Han]

It would be best if you could give more data.

These discussions are not constructive. Our goal is to reduce spam in this forum (not others).

[hrg...@gmail.com]

It would be best if you could give more data.

These discussions are not constructive. Our goal is to reduce spam in this forum (not others).

I gave all the data I have. I can't do more other than enfatice that speculation is never better than a single data point.

Regarding the spam in the forum, whenever I see spam I immediately click on the "Report abuse" button and flag the post as spam. You can only do this if you read this group via the website. I'd advice you to do the same, that way you contribute to less spam.

[Jackie Han]

About the spam issue, don't worry, you're doing the right thing from your own perspective.

I manage multiple Google Groups and other groups (like WeChat Groups) myself, and as I said earlier, I prefer this to be a management issue. My intention was to remind administrators to pay attention to why there has been a sudden increase of spam posts in recent days (It only appeared occasionally in the past).

I think the administrator has noticed now. Normally, they regularly clean up spam and ban users.

[Patrick Kettner]

Hi everyone!

Apologies for all of the noise last month. The threads have been wiped, those users banned, stricter automation put in place and threads opened with the spam detection team on groups.

There shouldn't be any more interruptions moving forward.

patrick