Re: Oracle Report Generator - SPAMMERS needed

"Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote in message news:<40981add$0$4548$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au>...
> Joel Garry wrote:
> >>>Well, Jonathan abuses his .sig, but that's ok, since few in the group
> [snip]
>
> >>
> >>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?
>
> Erm, you said it was abuse. But that it was abuse that was somehow OK. I
> don't see it as abuse at all. That's all. I understand you deem it cool
> at the end of the day, and I wasn't suggesting you were having a go at
> Jonathan.
>
> >>>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,
>
> The nub of the entire issue, I think.
>
> [snip]
>
> > some groups want to be self-policed.
>
> I'm sorry, but I don't see how one can possibly determine "group
> thought" in the absence of a group of moderators whose job it is to take
> feedback etc and determine that. Which means that "self-policing"
> becomes the imposition of the views of some who aggrandise to themselves
> the right to determine what the group's attitude is.

That is what reading the group and determining its gestalt before posting is for. Self-policing methodology can be implicit, as each using his own gelatenous matter, or explicit, as a bunch of posters agree to enforce specific guidelines. We are in such an implicit situation, so Daniel or whomever has every right to make such determinations, just as everyone else can condemn such things. If we were to have a majority agree to some guidelines, things might be different. I think this would be much easier than changing the charter, and more useful than letting status quo, as long as it could be kept from detail-mires. If someone were to post a draft guideline, that might be very useful - I don't want to do it because I don't think my opinion mirrors the groups.

>
> Sure, there is a charter. That establishes principles, and that's all
> well and good. But how that charter is enforced ("policed" if you will)
> is not a matter for an individual to determine.

As things are, it is such a matter. Then other individuals judge that. Or not.

>
> [snip]
>
> > For cdo*, I think there are going to be
> > people who want to see the group relatively clean,
>
> I'm sure we all do (and I realise the contradiction between that
> statement and the one about the impossibility of determining the group's
> attitude!).
>
> It's whether stomping on people with attitude is the right way of
> achieving that. I don't think it is. In fact, far more words have been
> expended discussing the thing than if Daniel had just kept quiet in the
> first place.
>
> Can we agree, perhaps, that "stomping" is counter-productive?
>

Yes. Well, maybe. No wait, spammers must be stomped!

> > The idea of self-policing for unmoderated groups is well accepted,
> > indeed the purpose of chartering, and sometimes it works and sometimes
> > not.
>
> As I say, charters set forth prinicples, which is sound. But the charter
> doesn't grant anyone the right to aggrandise to themselves the power to
> interpret those principles in their own particular way on behalf of some
> nebulous concept of "group attitude", nor to enforce them in their own,
> er, "unique" style.

Read the charter again, with close attention to what rights are reserved or granted. See any? The idea is that anyone with a style that is overly "unique" will be forced out by peer pressure. And that is generally what happens.

>
> > Overall, it works more than not,
>
> Absolutely agree. Particularly here in .server. And why I therefore
> cannot understand making such a fuss about the original post.
>
> If I thought Daniel's telling off of the original poster was going to
> have any effect whatsoever on the chances of subsequent posters with
> different products making similar sort of posts; or if I though cdo* was
> in danger of drowning under a flood of commerical spam, my views might
> be different. But it won't, and we aren't, so they're not. :-)

But it does, and we could. Perhaps it doesn't look that way because the general spammer who actually follows what happens (ie, those with a commercial Oracle product as opposed to, say, link farming) will slink away without a public apology. And we just don't know how many actually google and say "whoa, better not spam there!"

>
> > I've had a lot of feedback over time where people say "I didn't know
> > that, thank you for pointing me to it."
>
> Well, that's rather a different approach to screaming "SPAMMER" at them,
> altering their company's name to read "SPAM Corporation" and talking to
> them as if they were idiots or scum. Your approach I could live with.

Well, let's just all start doing that! Maybe if we did, Daniel wouldn't feel so impelled to take the gauntlet himself.

>
> >>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.
>
> I simply mean that I am capable of deciding for myself whether a post is
> off-topic, spam, or whatever. I don't need Daniel making that judgement
> for me, nor anyone else.

Your needs, ok, the group's needs, something else.

>
> > I think you are missing the point of net.wisdom being a
> > self-correcting and self-improving mechanism. Feedback is important
> > to the mechanism.
>
> I didn't say it wasn't. But that's what email is for. The group doesn't
> need clogging up with the sort of thing that sparked this entire thread
> off. Anyone who felt the original post was spam, off-topic or whatever
> could have emailed the guy.

Basically, I've found that emailing for off-topic posts gets a reply like "Who made YOU King Of The Net?" Unless, he's already gotten multiple emails, where they either get much more defensive or admit they didn't know - the classic gang-FAQ responses. Being able to point to public humilation of others making the same mistake leads more quickly to such an admission.

And of course, there is no strong identity checking, some email addresses are just plain bogus. It winds up nullifying a whole lot of effort by a lot of people, who eventually give up. For that matter, how do we know Daniel even posted the "SPAMMERS needed" response?

>
> > How can you have a self-tuning database without it?
> > :-) If spammers see other spammers posting without public
> > consequences, they think it is ok.
>
> The logical leap to the consequences needing to be "public" is one I
> can't follow.

It creates a relationship between spam and spammers so we can throw an IMP-00061.
>
> A good discussion, however.
>
> Regards
> HJR
jg

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