RE: de-spammed index to www-xml-query-comments

Summary: the W3C should make preventing
spam in its lists and archives a priority,
and it is likely that a simple approach will be adequate.

Details:
I strongly support any effort to remove the spam
postings from the w3c mailing lists and archives.  
Some are already protected, but those
for user comments have not been.
The presence of so much spam, over 80% of the messages,
significantly hurts the ability of people to 
use them for their intended purpose.
(Rough analogy -- if enough street signs are covered 
in graffitti that they are generally unreadable
then even the readable one will no longer be looked at.)

Thanks to Michael Dyck for providing an existence proof
that this can be done.  I think this is very worthwhile,
even though the links to next and previous messages
become gandling pointers.  

There are various ways that this could be fixed.  But perhaps
the simplest is to adopt a system that prevents spam 
from arriving in the first place.  Basically the approach
is to have an approver role that first gets all postings.  
To prevent any person from getting overloaded it is possible to have 
a group of approvers and some load balancing mechanism,
with people able to remove themselves from the list when they go on
vacation etc.
I think the simplest policy, if any one approver oks the
message it is allowed would be acceptable.

 
Hopefully helpfully yours,
Steve
-- 
Steven Tolkin          steve.tolkin@fmr.com      617-563-0516 
Fidelity Investments   82 Devonshire St. V10D    Boston MA 02109
There is nothing so practical as a good theory.  Comments are by me, 
not Fidelity Investments, its subsidiaries or affiliates.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Cotton [mailto:pcotton@microsoft.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 9:29 AM
> To: Michael Dyck
> Cc: www-ql@w3.org; C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (E-mail); Massimo Marchiori
> (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: de-spammed index to www-xml-query-comments
> 
> 
> On behalf of the XML Query WG I want to thank you for your 
> efforts to create this "de-spammed index" for the public XML 
> Query comments list (mailto:www-xml-query-comments@w3.org).  
> 
> The XML Query WG considered the problem of spam on this list 
> at our weekly telcon today and have decided to investigate 
> the possibility of making 
> mailto:www-xml-query-comments@w3.org a monitored list so that 
> we filter out future spam messages.  We will let you know if 
> we can achieve this goal.
> 
> /paulc  
> 
> Paul Cotton, Microsoft Canada 
> 17 Eleanor Drive, Nepean, Ontario K2E 6A3 
> Tel: (613) 225-5445 Fax: (425) 936-7329 
> <mailto:pcotton@microsoft.com> 
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Dyck [mailto:MichaelDyck@home.com]
> > Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 1:57 AM
> > To: www-ql@w3.org
> > Subject: de-spammed index to www-xml-query-comments
> > 
> > 
> > If, like me, you're annoyed by the amount of spam in the archives of
> > www-xml-query-comments, I invite you to use my alternative index:
> > 
> > 
http://members.home.net/michaeldyck/xml/xquery/www-xml-query-comments/
> 
> -Michael Dyck
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2001 16:57:48 UTC