Decline in posting counts
Terence
And a very large proportion that year is spam.
The trend downwards is statistically significant.
I infer: "driven off by the spam".
year jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov
dec
2009: 1018 1178 1516 1168 959 723 701 682 846 971 916 661
2010: 72
Seriously: if you, the readers, are fed up, then try posting on
http://groups.google.com/group/fortran_
And you can double-post (ne each) if you want to make your point or
get a posting seen and commented on, free of spam.
Erik Toussaint
> Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
> And a very large proportion that year is spam.
So, what you are saying, is, that there is a decline in spam? ;)
> The trend downwards is statistically significant.
>
> I infer: "driven off by the spam".
>
> year jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov
> dec
> 2009: 1018 1178 1516 1168 959 723 701 682 846 971 916 661
> 2010: 72
>
> Seriously: if you, the readers, are fed up, then try posting on
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/fortran_
>
> And you can double-post (ne each) if you want to make your point or
> get a posting seen and commented on, free of spam.
I won't repeat what has been said many times before about using a
separate news reader to connect to an NNTP server for your access to
Usenet, but I do want to say this. Many people, including myself, use
that route to follow this, and other, newsgroups, and as a consequence
hardly see any spam, if at all. If all those NNTP service providers can
filter out the spam, shouldn't the mighty Google be able to do the same?
All that is needed is the will to do so, but apparently this will is not
present at the moment. Should you really be steering people towards
their forums if they don't care about the amount of spam that is posted
on the net?
Erik.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<1f3a93cd-1875-4c87...@r24g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
Terence <tbwr...@cantv.net> writes:
> Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
> And a very large proportion that year is spam.
> The trend downwards is statistically significant.
Rubbish.
> I infer: "driven off by the spam".
>
> year jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov
> dec
> 2009: 1018 1178 1516 1168 959 723 701 682 846 971 916 661
> 2010: 72
What do we see? About 900--1000 posts per month, with expected drops
during the summer and winter holidays.
> Seriously: if you, the readers, are fed up, then try posting on
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/fortran_
Give me a break. Get a REAL newsreader. See the quote of the day
below.
> And you can double-post (ne each) if you want to make your point or
> get a posting seen and commented on, free of spam.
Most people tend to ignore those who are SHOUTING, not listen to them.
What is "double-post"?
--
The basic functionality of Google Groups is lower, and its implementation far
more ignorant, than, say, a 1990 version of Majordomo.
---RobertPlamondon at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/
robin
news:1f3a93cd-1875-4c87...@r24g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
| Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
| And a very large proportion that year is spam.
| The trend downwards is statistically significant.
|
| I infer: "driven off by the spam".
|
| year jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov
| dec
| 2009: 1018 1178 1516 1168 959 723 701 682 846 971 916 661
| 2010: 72
Spam didn't start until end September, and since then,
postings increased.
In any case, there are only 7 days so far in January,
so you are comparing 7 days with 31 days.
Not only that, folks are away on holidays,
so 72 means nothing.
Gordon Sande
I have seen more discussion of spam than of spam! Now and then there will be a
burst of the sort of ads that I see on some other newsgroups. All the spam
complaints seen to come from folks who use Google. The implication, often
stated explicitly here as well, is that regular ISPs offering UseNet have
some sort of spam control somewhere along the propagation chain that is
missing from Google. The obvious cure is to not use Google which has the
additional benefit of avoiding its interface which seems to draw as many
complaints as does its spam. (Perhaps Google thinks it has to archive the
spam as well as the regular content so they will not chnage their policies.)
Perhaps the spam removal filters should also remove the complaints about
the spam!
Tim Prince
> All the spam
> complaints seen to come from folks who use Google.
No, it's from people who use news servers which aren't protected against
Google.
The implication, often
> stated explicitly here as well, is that regular ISPs offering UseNet have
> some sort of spam control
My primary "regular" ISP finally stopped news feeds entirely, after
years of giving Google priority over non-spam. My secondary ISP stopped
news feeds several years ago, as well as stopping for-fee services while
continuing to collect the fee.
I'd guess that these ISPs were simply looking for excuses not to
continue news feeds, and taking advantage of Google to turn customers
away from news groups.
I followed the advice given here and subscribed to one of the excellent
news group specialists.
I have no idea how Google could get any advantage by tactics tending
toward killing public news groups.
Luka Djigas
<g.s...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>I have seen more discussion of spam than of spam! Now and then there will be a
>burst of the sort of ads that I see on some other newsgroups. All the spam
>complaints seen to come from folks who use Google. The implication, often
>stated explicitly here as well, is that regular ISPs offering UseNet have
>some sort of spam control somewhere along the propagation chain that is
>missing from Google. The obvious cure is to not use Google which has the
>additional benefit of avoiding its interface which seems to draw as many
>complaints as does its spam. (Perhaps Google thinks it has to archive the
>spam as well as the regular content so they will not chnage their policies.)
>
>Perhaps the spam removal filters should also remove the complaints about
>the spam!
>
I didn't wish to "attack" Terence's work regarding spam,
but these are pretty much my thoughts exactly.
For folks who use regular news servers and news readers, spam is
almost a non issue. So the only thing I see regarding spam is posts
from nice people (like Terence) who are not in killfiles, but talk
about it. But then again, talking about spam is almost equally
offtopic as spam itself ... you get the point.
Nevertheless, Terence - keep at it, although, I doubt anyone at
Google's listening or caring about it.
Although here I have access to no less than three, news servers are
somewhat of a dying breed. Newer generations don't find them
interesting enough (what advantages web forum's have over usenet is a
mystery to me).
with regards
Luka
Gib Bogle
Apparently the young ones are using something called Twitter. God knows what
that is.
Dr Ivan D. Reid
wrote in <hi5o5b$9n1$1...@speranza.aioe.org>:
> Apparently the young ones are using something called Twitter. God knows what
> that is.
Our Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition recently got into a small
spot of bother when he suggested that people who sent twitters were twats!
--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
Beliavsky
> Terence wrote:
<snip>
> > Seriously: if you, the readers, are fed up, then try posting on
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/fortran_
>
> > And you can double-post (ne each) if you want to make your point or
> > get a posting seen and commented on, free of spam.
>
> I won't repeat what has been said many times before about using a
> separate news reader to connect to an NNTP server for your access to
> Usenet, but I do want to say this. Many people, including myself, use
> that route to follow this, and other, newsgroups, and as a consequence
> hardly see any spam, if at all. If all those NNTP service providers can
> filter out the spam, shouldn't the mighty Google be able to do the same?
> All that is needed is the will to do so, but apparently this will is not
> present at the moment. Should you really be steering people towards
> their forums if they don't care about the amount of spam that is posted
> on the net?
At the Google group Terence mentioned, group managers can delete spam
and ban spammers, so spam does not stay long.
Richard Maine
> At the Google group Terence mentioned...
In addition to all the usual problems of google groups, that group has
the extra "feature" of being impossible to find. Try searching for it in
google groups using some obscure keyword like.... oh.... fortran. No
joy. You have to search with the underscore in order to find it. So one
has to be "in the know" in order to have any chance of finding it.
That's not going to be very effective as a place for people to go for
help.
I wouldn't be using it anyway, but that's either a pretty egregious
problem or someone has a very different viewpoint than mine of what such
a newsgroup would be for. Insert here the obvious comments about looking
at a software user's viewpoint in doing interface design.
--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
p.ki...@ic.ac.uk
> I have no idea how Google could get any advantage by tactics tending
> toward killing public news groups.
Since they cannot Tmake money by serving ads inside newsgroup posts,
so they'd rather usenet groups died and were replaced by web formats?
ObFortran: ... nope, can't think of one.
#Paul
Craig Powers
> Tim Prince <Timoth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> I have no idea how Google could get any advantage by tactics tending
>> toward killing public news groups.
>
> Since they cannot Tmake money by serving ads inside newsgroup posts,
I don't see how that follows. What's stopping google from serving ads
inside newsgroup posts?
They obviously can't do it on messages that don't originate or get
viewed on the google reader, but messages being viewed on the google
reader are the whole point here.
Charles
> Gordon Sande wrote:
> My primary "regular" ISP finally stopped news feeds entirely.
Mine too, both the one at home and the one at our summer cabin.
> I followed the advice given here and subscribed to one of the excellent> news group specialists.
But since I retired, a paid service is not worthwhile. So I use
google, but not very often, and ignore threads that don't have several
replies. I suspect that paid services will not attract students or
casual users.
I would be delighted if everyone switched to a moderated group, but
that does not seem to be happening.
dpb
...
> But since I retired, a paid service is not worthwhile. So I use
> google, ...
There are quite a few free servers
news.aioe.org
news.eternal-september.org
being two. Both have a fairly decent amount of spam filtering
> I would be delighted if everyone switched to a moderated group, but
> that does not seem to be happening.
They have their problems, too...first and foremost the willingness of
somebody suitable to serve as moderator.
W/ the above groups' filtering and a few judicious ones in the reader, I
see little to complain of, truthfully.
--
Colin Watters
"dpb" <no...@non.net> wrote in message
news:hj20r8$ae0$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Charles wrote:
> ...
>
>> But since I retired, a paid service is not worthwhile. So I use
>> google, ...
>
> There are quite a few free servers
>
> news.aioe.org
> news.eternal-september.org
>
> being two.
I have tried both of these. Aoie looked promising at first, but then over
Christmas most of CLF dissappeared from the server. Eternal-September
meanwhile shows me posts back to 09 nov 2009, and nothing has dissappeared
(so-far!) since then. I use Outlook Express.
I have seen exactly one spam posting on Eternal September in about a month
of usage. (Contrast this with a typical of 10 a day on my ISP's native news
server.)
--
Qolin
Email: my qname at domain dot com
Domain: qomputing
carolus
>> There are quite a few free servers
>>
>> news.aioe.org
>> news.eternal-september.org
>>
>> being two.
>
> I have tried both of these. Aoie looked promising at first, but then over
> Christmas most of CLF dissappeared from the server. Eternal-September
> meanwhile shows me posts back to 09 nov 2009, and nothing has dissappeared
> (so-far!) since then.
Thanks. I am trying eternal-septermber. There are around 30 spam
messages today on comp.lang.fortran, and 8 from 1/13, but older messages
seem pretty clean. How can that happen without human intervention?
It beats google groups, anyway.
The bayesian spam filter in Thunderbird works pretty well for e-mail,
but if there is any way to apply it to newsgroups I haven't found it. I
suppose that would require downloading every message. Are there any mail
readers that can usefully filter newsgroups?
dpb
...
> Thanks. I am trying eternal-septermber. There are around 30 spam
> messages today on comp.lang.fortran, and 8 from 1/13, but older messages
> seem pretty clean. How can that happen without human intervention?
...
I didn't see but a couple on c.l.f today.
It appears they have a autobot that runs and expires identified spam
from their server. I routinely get a "expired message" indicator on
such posts. If I remember I can run the "delete expired messages"
function first but there are few enough can simply use the "mark ignore
thread" function quicker as leaf thru...
--
Craig Powers
> Colin Watters wrote:
>>> There are quite a few free servers
>>>
>>> news.aioe.org
>>> news.eternal-september.org
>>>
>>> being two.
>>
>> I have tried both of these. Aoie looked promising at first, but then
>> over Christmas most of CLF dissappeared from the server.
>> Eternal-September meanwhile shows me posts back to 09 nov 2009, and
>> nothing has dissappeared (so-far!) since then.
>
> Thanks. I am trying eternal-septermber. There are around 30 spam
> messages today on comp.lang.fortran, and 8 from 1/13, but older messages
> seem pretty clean. How can that happen without human intervention?
There's a lot of automated spam detection and swatting stuff running out
there. (Or rather, there was when I paid attention to such things, and
I assume it's still going.) I would assume that Eternal September is a
lot more amenable to accepting the assistance than Google is.
Aris
Bleachbot cancels spam on usenet, but it is up to the newsserver to
accept these cancels. Google doesn't accept.
Terence
> Terence <tbwri...@cantv.net> writes:
> > Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
> > And a very large proportion that year is spam.
> > The trend downwards is statistically significant.
>
> Rubbish.
>
(omitted)
>
> Give me a break. Get a REAL newsreader. See the quote of the day
> below.
>
I have to reply to this comment:
In the real world, you can only use a newsreader on an Internet
service that offers the facility. And if there is only one service and
no newsreaders (e.g. because is govenment-owned and censored, there is
no choice.
So no newsreader service equates to 10% bread, 90% spam.
And I MODERATE a moderated Fortran Forum and no spam gets through.
Colin Watters
"Terence" <tbwr...@cantv.net> wrote in message news:a93d7fa2-3ae4
-4d09-b572-...@h2g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 7, 9:38 pm, Phillip Helbig wrote:
>
> > Terence <tbwri...@cantv.net> writes:
> > > Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
> > > And a very large proportion that year is spam.
> > > The trend downwards is statistically significant.
> >
> > Rubbish.
> >
> (omitted)
> >
> > Give me a break. Get a REAL newsreader. See the quote of the day
> > below.
> >
>
> I have to reply to this comment:
> In the real world, you can only use a newsreader on an Internet
> service that offers the facility. And if there is only one service and
> no newsreaders (e.g. because is govenment-owned and censored, there is
> no choice.
>
Erm ... Surely if you have an Internet Service, you can choose to connect
(via a newsreader, not a browser) to ANY news server
on the internet that allows you to do so. You don't need the permission or
co-operation of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Yes, that ISP may or
may not
have a news server, but you aren't forced to use it if they do, and you
aren't out of options if they don't.
I connect through Demon/Thus in UK. They have a news server that faithfully
serves up all the spam you seem to see. Hence I have stopped using it and,
having tried
a number of others, have settled (for the moment) on Eternal-September.
What prevents you from doing the same?
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<bo...@qomputing.com> writes:
> Erm ... Surely if you have an Internet Service, you can choose to connect
> (via a newsreader, not a browser) to ANY news server
> on the internet that allows you to do so.
But there are few which allow one to do so for a reasonable cost if they
are not associated witht he ISP. Also, the ISP has to allow traffic
through the relevant ports.
user1
I suspect this is rubbish.
I notice that Robin seems to be posting through a news server, and that
he is in the same country as you, with probably the same ISP
(Telstra/Bigpond). Perhaps you could do it also if you made the effort.
Terence
> >> Terence<tbwri...@cantv.net> writes:
> >>> Note the decline in monthly posting counts from 2009 on.
> >>> And a very large proportion that year is spam.
> >>> The trend downwards is statistically significant.
>
> I notice that Robin seems to be posting through a news server, and that
> he is in the same country as you, with probably the same ISP
> (Telstra/Bigpond). Perhaps you could do it also if you made the effort.
Reply:-
1) See my above normal e-mail user address - Venezuela.
2) As a visitor to Australia, I HAVE access though a "bigpond"
account, but NOT the same service as Robin; there are several; the
distinction is shown by the qualifier group after "bigpond". (.net.au
or .com). My service is e-mail with some limited browsing and no
usenet service (and a strange browser). I noticed a posting in alt.asm
where that user and others point out that their services, also, do not
offer usenet.
user1
OK. Sounds painful. There are certainly other reasons why a person might
use the Google interface, and why we wish they could improve it. (
anybody browsing through a cellular device ?)
carolus
I am trying eternal-septermber. There are around 30 spam
> messages today on comp.lang.fortran, and 8 from 1/13, but older messages
> seem pretty clean.
Curiously, my other 4 new subscriptions on eternal-september seem
totally spam-free (comp.unix.shell, sci.math.num-anal, sci.stat.math,
sci.math.symbolic, comp.soft-sys.math.scilab). I wonder what is
different about comp.lang.fortran?
Colin Watters
"carolus" <worNOSPAM...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:hjfl1o$qtb$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
E-S has been totally spam free for me in about 6 weeks of clf usage, with 2
exceptions: one about 3 weeks ago, and another just 5 minutes ago.
I wonder why others users of the same newsgroup from the same server have
different experiences.
Maybe the spam is added to the server whenever it arrives, then discarded
once per day (or however often) when the spam identification software is
run. So the spam count you see depends on how recently the spam cleaner
has run compared to when you connect.
Well its just a theory...
Terence
Historical propularity based on published monthly counts. Which is
were we came it...
The others mention are much lower-volume forums (I'm a member of some
of those mentioned).
Colin Watters
"Colin Watters" <bo...@qomputing.com> wrote in message
news:hjfvem$tg4$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Since the above, I have observed a number of Spam messages appear in CLF on
E-S, but every time I click on them (in Outlook Express), I get "message
has been removed from the server". So something very similar to the above
seems to be happening, apparrently more often than once per day.
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<bo...@qomputing.com> writes:
> Since the above, I have observed a number of Spam messages appear in CLF on
> E-S, but every time I click on them (in Outlook Express), I get "message
> has been removed from the server". So something very similar to the above
> seems to be happening, apparrently more often than once per day.
This is expected behaviour if someone cancels a message. However, not
all news servers honour cancel requests (mainly due to potential abuse).
Colin Watters
Huh, today on E-S there were about 45 spams. I should have kept my big
mouth shut.