How I got rid of those spam posts on c.l.t

[Alexandre Ferrieux]

Hi,

If like me you are using Google Groups with Firefox, and are suffering
from the huge amount of spam posts, maybe you'll like this little
trick: use the fabulous Firefox extension "GreaseMonkey", which is a
generic filter allowing to run arbitrary Javascript code (possibly
modifying the contents) after loading webpages.

Using the GreaseMonkey script located at

http://paste.tclers.tk/887

you'll see that all those "Gucci ... Replica .. whatever" garbage
lines are replaced by whitespace in the Topic List view of Google
Groups. So far that's the best I can do with my 30mn of experience
with the tool. But surely after a bit of work we can remove the lines
entirely.

If you want to extend the filter, you'll quickly spot the regexp near
the top:

/.*(replica |gucci|wholesale|discount).*/gi

Enjoy !

-Alex

PS: Instructions to set it all up:
Once the extension is installed, Tools->GreaseMonkey->New User Script
In the Includes field, type or paste: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/*
In the namesapce field, type any string: foo
Then choose and open an editor, paste the above script, save and exit,
then OK, and Reload the current page.
After each cycle editing the script, Reload again.
The Enabled status of GreaseMonkey is sticky, so after stabilizing
your regexp you can forget completely about it.

PS2: Share your regexps !!!

[USCode]

Alexandre Ferrieux wrote:
> ... If like me you are using Google Groups with Firefox, and are suffering
> from the huge amount of spam posts ...

I know some folks have complained to Google about this and it has
infected other groups as well ... but is Google actually DOING anything
about it yet??? Evidently not I guess!!!

[Bryan Oakley]

Much as I wish it was, it's not Google's problem to solve. It is a
Usenet problem; google is merely one of hundreds (thousands?) of
gateways into USENET.

[Kam-Hung Soh]

Also try this GresaeMonkey script, "Google Groups Killfile", from
http://www.penney.org/google-groups-killfile-343-released.html

--
Kam-Hung Soh <a href="http://kamhungsoh.com/blog">Software Salariman</a>

[David Gravereaux]

Actually, it is their problem as the spams are being posted through them
on apparently toss-away accounts. Their official position is that they
won't "moderate" their users. IOW, Google is spammer friendly.

So send the complaints to groups...@google.com all you like.. Don't
expect any response or admission of responsibility :/

I'm moments from killfile'ing everything that originates from
*.googlegroups.com entirely. Valid content included.

Lucky us, the spam isn't bad here, but other groups have it much worse.

[USCode]

Bryan Oakley wrote:
> USCode wrote:

>> I know some folks have complained to Google about this and it has
>> infected other groups as well ... but is Google actually DOING
>> anything about it yet??? Evidently not I guess!!!
>
> Much as I wish it was, it's not Google's problem to solve. It is a
> Usenet problem; google is merely one of hundreds (thousands?) of
> gateways into USENET.

Sorry Bryan, I should have specified in my post that someone here, in
another thread, had determined that the spam was being injected into
USENET via Google.

[Bryan Oakley]

My mistake as well. I didn't realize that Google groups was the point of
injection. <shrug> I've given up trying to fight it. It takes very
little mental energy to ignore or mark a spam as read.

[vit...@gmail.com]

Actually, it should be pretty easy for Google to provide a (partial)
solution. I remember Yahoo had that for their message boards. It is an
option to blacklist messages from any user you wish. Otherwise, spam
is very difficult to fight. With thousands of groups available, and
thousands messages in them, Google is probably swamped with
complaints.

Greasemonky script, if perfected, could be a great solution too.

---Victor

[Alexandre Ferrieux]

Wow ! This dwarfs my little attempt :-)
Many thanks for putting me on the right track.

One question about this nice script: is there documentation
somewhere ? Indeed I see it can killfile exact topics, but apparently
regexp wildcards don't work (the code explicitly escapes them, so that
a topic "A+B" is interpreted literally).
Of course I can modify the Javascript to remove the escaping, but I
wanted to make sure there was no GUI-level way of doing it...

-Alex

[Alexandre Ferrieux]

On Apr 22, 3:00 pm, Alexandre Ferrieux <alexandre.ferri...@gmail.com>
wrote:

FWIW, the following patch to the script removes the regexp-escaping,
thus allowing to generalize the kill-patterns. To use it, after
clicking the cross, when prompted to edit the kill-pattern, if you get
for example:

Topic: Wholesale Replica Gucci Hermes

edit it to

Topic:.*(Wholesale|Replica|Gucci|Hermes)

and you'll get rid of a very large class of junk in no time.

-Alex

--- orig.googlegroupskillfile.user.js 2008-04-22 18:05:18.000000000
+0200
+++ googlegroupskillfile.user.js 2008-04-22 18:06:37.000000000
+0200
@@ -53,7 +53,6 @@
var data = "";
var list = new Array();
var newList = new Array();
- killspec = RegExpEscape(killspec);

// initialize variables

@@ -85,7 +84,7 @@
data = unescape(GM_getValue("GoogleKillFile", "-----"));
list = data.split(splitCh);

- list.push(RegExpEscape(killspec));
+ list.push(killspec);

alert(killspec + ' has been added to the KillFile.\nRefresh page to
see changes.');

[Kam-Hung Soh]

You can also reduce the number of patterns to enter by using a
case-insensitive matching; just add a "i" argument in each ".compile()"
function call.

[Alexandre Ferrieux]

On Apr 25, 4:38 am, "Kam-Hung Soh" <kamhung....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You can also reduce the number of patterns to enter by using a  
> case-insensitive matching; just add a "i" argument in each ".compile()"  
> function call.

Thanks again ! The tool is perfect with this last change :-)

-Alex