Re: Oracle Report Generator - SPAMMERS needed

"Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<4096ed34$0$4547$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> Joel Garry wrote:
> > "Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<40947182$0$442$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> [snip]
>
> > Well, Jonathan abuses his .sig, but that's ok, since few in the group
> > are .sig nazis. It is long established usenet practice going back to
> > before the commercialization of the net that having a bit of
> > commercial in a .sig was acceptable. At that time, there _were_ .sig
> > nazis who would throw a flaming dogpile on .sigs over four lines. It
> > made a little more sense at that time since most newsreaders
> > automatically appended a .sig, so it was generally was a static thing
> > that would be on every post.
>
> Again, you say it's "abuse" of a sig, but you've got to pretty anally
> up-tight to read it that way. Which is why, fortunately, most people
> don't seem to.

Hey, am I not clear enough that it is ok? Silly, maybe, given the way some newsreaders deal with two dashes by themselves on a line, but .sigs were never officially defined and accepted, they have always been a custom. And customs vary among groups and over time. Since I'm fairly sure Jonathan is a very smart and very detail oriented guy, I have to assume he does his .sig that way on purpose.

(Stating the obvious), I abuse .sigs more than most anybody. It started as kind of a statement about google not including .sigs, but has taken on a life of its own since Cox threw away my @home.com. I figured it would last 6 months tops on google.

>
> >>He's not offering a job, or charging us for the privilege of being beta
> >>testers, and I don't therefore think this falls under the category of
> >>"marketing", where .marketplace would indeed be the appropriate venue.
> >
> >
> > You might want to google my postings on this, in summary I think the
> > charter simply isn't clear enough. Although I think Daniel's position
> > is extreme, I think it is both understandable and useful.
>
> I think it's the "extremity" I have difficulty with.

At one time, I had the same difficulty. Now I think he has good spadar (spam radar). Perhaps more of a problem is how he deals with it, he certainly doesn't want to have subsequent postings propagate the spam, and seeing it pop up as a new thread out of context can be disturbing to some.

>
> [snip]
>
> > Here I disagree, and it is exactly why I support Daniel in his netcop
> > efforts. Unmoderated groups can go downhill amazingly fast, and
> > policing is _necessary_.
>
> That is an oxymoron. If policing is necessary, then it should be a
> moderated group. Moderating *is* policing, after all. By definition, an
> unmoderated group is neither policed, nor wants to be policed (otherwise
> it would have set itself up as moderated in the first place). There's a
> difference, I think, between wanting on-topic material that helps and
> wanting a netcop.

Not an oxymoron. Rather, a description that takes into account that some groups want to be self-policed. Moderating does include policing, but policing does not imply moderation in the sense of someone prejudging posts. Perhaps it would help to think of moderated groups as despotic monarchies, and unmoderated groups as having a range from democracy to anarchy. There is a place for police in all but the most anarchic group. And even the latter seems to attract nutcases who want to police. For cdo*, I think there are going to be people who want to see the group relatively clean, and some will be vigilant about it. Rather than disallowing such behavior, which is impossible, I think it works much better to have guidelines that disallow vigilantism.

The idea of self-policing for unmoderated groups is well accepted, indeed the purpose of chartering, and sometimes it works and sometimes not. Overall, it works more than not, with some notable exceptions (the unfortunately named misc.jobs.misc being notable as a good group that just plain got wiped out without ever being suitably replaced, in spite of the efforts of numerous posters to keep it clean - it certainly affected cdom creation).

>
> >We need to not only support those who are
> > willing to do it,
>
> I disagree. I don't support anyone clogging up the airwaves with
> statements I could have thought about myself, or which didn't need to be
> stated in the first place.
>

Well, just 'cause you could have thought about them doesn't mean anything. How does one decide a statement doesn't need to be stated? Sometimes there is a need to point out the obvious.

> > we need to agree on clear and consistent guidelines.
> > TINC is an old joke on usenet, but somehow we need to interpret the
> > charter and the feelings of the group in a manner to head off problems
> > as quickly as possible. That is what a newsgroup FAQ is for.
>
> We've been here before, though. Polish a FAQ as you would, post it as
> often as you dare, and people will still ignore it.

I've had a lot of feedback over time where people say "I didn't know that, thank you for pointing me to it." Just because idiots don't read faqs before posting doesn't invalidate faqs any more than not reading a group before posting invalidates all previous posts on the group. But it is more constructive to point directly to an appropriate previous post than to just dismissively say "we've already been around that on this group."

Maybe a flame cycle is necessary every time someone posts something that is arguably spammish. I am not convinced that being able to say "here, look at the guidelines, you are an idiot" is useless.  

>
> ISTM that the best filter for these things lies between one's ears, is
> grey and pink, and slightly squishy. For anything else, there's private
> email.

That can be turned around to mean a spammer's judgement on whether to spam should be the deciding factor as to whether it is ok.

>
> >>>Please pay attention to usenet rules and stop spamming. Just because
> >>>you can spell the name of a usenet group does not mean posting to it
> >>>is appropriate.
> >
> >
> > There's always http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=37a785d0.1128228777%40newsfeed.sexzilla.net&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
> > Meow.
>
> Which kind of says it all, really, doesn't it!? What causes a group to
> be the subject of a miaowing campaign? "bitching about off-topic
> crossposts in your newsgroup. Furthermore, your indoctrination into the
> Empire will be speeded if you threaten mailbombing, post flooding,
> netcopping, legal action..."
>
> Somethings, in other words, are best left unsaid. And 'you are
> off-topic' seems to me to be one of them.

I think you are missing the point of net.wisdom being a self-correcting and self-improving mechanism. Feedback is important to the mechanism. How can you have a self-tuning database without it?  :-) If spammers see other spammers posting without public consequences, they think it is ok.

I would expect Daniel has very entertaining email on the subject of spamming.

jg

--
@home.com is bogus.  "It is as if I borrowed your watch, told you what
time it is, handed it back to you and charged you a fee." - Richard A.
Smith http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040502/news_mz1h2web.html