Just for the record, SpamAssassin was added to the server,
after a testing phase. This activity predates the uptick
in CLC spam.
This was originally implemented inside the server instance.
The result (side-effect), is spam headers would show up in
your feed, yet if you clicked on them, there were no bodies
and the "article had expired". The server would clean these up,
using a batch operation, maybe once a day. But... the damage
is done, in terms of defacing your news client. Perhaps after
your client does a "compact", the expired headers will be
removed from in front of your eyeballs. Technically, this
was "spam removal" (you couldn't read the bodies), but the
headers made a mess and people would continue to call that
spam.
A recent change to the E-S architecture, added an additional
server. A transit server equipped with the spam filter, does
the usual thing. The transit server then passes the clean
stream (with spam headers removed) to the real E-S server.
The purpose of the dual server arch, is to avoid defacing
your news client pane, with expired headers.
The result of this today, is the expired headers are no longer
pulled into the client. The visual appearance should be improved.
If there are problems, report them to eternal-september.support .
That group is on more than one server, but it is not on all
servers. For example, it used to be on AIOE, before AIOE was
knocked out of action. You do not need an account on E-S, to
submit a report to that particular group. If your server does not
have eternal-september.support, you can connect to E-S itself and the
support groups are made available, with authentication turned off.
Paul