For Igenlode's Eyes Only
D'artagnan
(reading/posting/emailing) controls + group rules of The Zaca, I can
understand why people feel more comfortable there. Alt.fan.errol-flynn is
a wild & woolly place by comparison--with the possibility of invasion by
spam, trolls, and posters from other ng's (who want to trash-talk)...
Pointing out the obvious, email addresses are vulnerable on Usenet. That's
why I have a couple of junk accounts that are expendable (still, I don't
post those here).
The Zaca moderator alluded to problems other Flynn groups have had. I can
imagine what those were but if you know specifics on that, I'd appreciate a
heads-up.
Thank you, Igenlode!
--D'artagnan
Igenlode Wordsmith
On 13 Jan 2008 D'artagnan wrote:
> I hate to say it: after seeing the careful membership
> (reading/posting/emailing) controls + group rules of The Zaca, I can
> understand why people feel more comfortable there. Alt.fan.errol-flynn is
> a wild & woolly place by comparison--with the possibility of invasion by
> spam, trolls, and posters from other ng's (who want to trash-talk)...
I can't say I've actually seen a lot of that here.
The average level of spam on Usenet is so low that it's only generally
perceptible when the level of normal traffic is catastrophically low.
Frankly, it isn't worth most spammers' while; not when they can use
their nets of 'zombie' computers to churn out millions of personally
addressed missives to people's individual webmail accounts.
As I said in an earlier post that apparently never made it (at least not
to my newsfeed), the main problem with this group is that a newsgroup
needs *interaction* -- discussion --rather than just reposted material,
whether from the Web or elsewhere. Which needs a minimum readership of
at least three, I'd say.
You have apparently taken off (to Timbuctoo?), and I don't get enough
online time to post very often....
> Pointing out the obvious, email addresses are vulnerable on Usenet. That's
> why I have a couple of junk accounts that are expendable (still, I don't
> post those here).
Yes, that's why I use a spam-protected gateway to post to newsgroups
(see the Author-Supplied-Address header for my real email). It's not as
bad as contact addresses scraped off the Web, but it is a problem. (That
may be one reason why these web-based mailing lists tend to restrict
reading access as well as posting access; you need to subscribe just to
see what they are saying.)
>
> The Zaca moderator alluded to problems other Flynn groups have had. I can
> imagine what those were but if you know specifics on that, I'd appreciate a
> heads-up.
>
That was before my time.
I know that they were complaining about 'plagiarism', because the
subject came up when I noticed that someone had started up a new Flynn
site which consisted of nothing but text and images copied from an
assortment of other sites, typos and commented text included. I never
quite understood how this could be a problem on a newsgroup...
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://ivory.150m.com/Tower/
* Usenet: Warning, may contain Nuts *