Re: Response to spam

On Jan 10, 9:44 pm, hjr.pyth..._at_gmail.com wrote:
> On Jan 11, 11:17 am, joel garry <joel-ga..._at_home.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 9, 5:44 pm, hjr.pyth..._at_gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 10, 12:02 am, "Martijn Tonies"
>
> > > <m.ton..._at_upscene.removethis.com> wrote:
> > > > >> > >>> I know that quite often members of the group don't see the outcome
> > > > of
> > > > >> > >>> what some of us do to fight spam. Here's one positive outcome.
>
> > > > >> > >And kudos to Daniel for showing us a positive outcome and for his
> > > > > > >diligence. And to James for understanding.
>
> > > > > > I have to agree, wholeheartedly. It is very easy to grow frustrated,
> > > > > > seeing the seemingly endless stream of spam spewed upon the forums.
>
> > > > > Very true... And in e-mail as well, luckily, I have that filtered. Worse
> > > > > solutions are floating around the net though.
>
> > > > > > That makes it easy to give up and stop sending in the abuse reports.
> > > > > > Daniel has showed us that it might not be totally futile.
>
> > > > > Yep, but as I said, I really wouldn't want to call this a "real" spammer.
>
> > > > >I do and I did.
> > > > >http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_...>lnk=gst&q=jg#f8326235fb135c9c
>
> > > > Hmm, good call :-)
>
> > I meant to add I posted in that other group before I saw Dan's post.
>
> > > > --
> > > > Martijn Tonies
> > > > Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, NexusDB, Oracle &
> > > > MS SQL Server
> > > > Upscene Productionshttp://www.upscene.com
> > > > My thoughts:http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/
> > > > Database development questions? Check the forum!http://www.databasedevelopmentforum.com
>
> > > > >I consider people who perform actions of specific misposting in order
> > > > >to drive traffic to their sites spammers.  And not a trivial form of
> > > > >spam either, as this is the sort of thing that can become high volume
> > > > >very fast, as everyone wants to make a million dollars from other
> > > > >people googling.
>
> > > > >The ethics of me not following the google webmaster help charter is
> > > > >left as an exercise for the student.
>
> > > "I consider people who perform actions of specific misposting in order
> > > to drive traffic to their sites spammers"
>
> > > Good definition. It means all those silly people who have just
> > > participated in the "8 things you didn't know about me - pass it on to
> > > 8 others" nonsense in the Blogsphere are also spammers.
>
> > Are they really trying to drive traffic to their sites, or just a bit
> > deluded as to the consequences?  I think I would have fallen for it
> > had I a regular blog.
>
> > > The worry is reading some of the names who have been sucked into the
> > > innocent-sounding "blog tagging game" as one deluded individual called
> > > it.
>
> > > It's not a game, though: It's a complete waste of time and, worse, it
> > > drives good information out of the blog aggregators faster than it can
> > > arrive.
>
> > I don't generally use the aggregators, so I was a bit late to this
> > party.  I thought it was quite amusing.  I thought that since the
> > number of Oracle bloggers seems relatively small, it would limit
> > itself early being something close to a power of 8.  You may have
> > changed my mind.
>
> > > If a pyramid letter suggesting you can earn a million bucks by passing
> > > the letter onto 10 others is spam, so is this crapola.
>
> > > If you have an Oracle blog and you are "tagged" by one of these
> > > idiots, please don't "pass it on". By all means share your 8 initimate
> > > secrets with the world at large, but don't encourage others to do so,
> > > especially as the general idea of blogs was, from the outset, that
> > > their authors would share all sorts of information, intimate secrets
> > > and otherwise, without encouragement
>
> > I kind of thought you taking your site offline was an overreaction,
> > but am explicitly making no such public judgement.
>
> When I posted something which simply pointed out that 8^4 is 4096 me-
> too '8 things' posts, I got replies that I needed to chill, stop being
> grumpy and that I was dictating what others could do with their blogs.
>
> In response to me pointing out, therefore, that there are practical
> and detrimental consequences from this blog explosion, I got two
> people telling me what they assumed my emotional state to be and one
> telling me that my concern at actual consequences was just me trying
> to fling my weight around.
>
> What do you propose I do when the blogging community of which I am
> allegedly a co-equal part doesn't take the points I make seriously
> (which is different from agreeing with them, I hasten to add) but
> instead immediately reaches for the personal attack?
>
> > In general, if
> > something looks to me like an overreaction, I try to assume either
> > I've missed something, or there is some other motivation that I don't
> > know about - but usually would like to, as it is likely to be
> > interesting or informative.  Have you had something specific happen
> > having to do with chain letters?
>
> No, of course not. What an odd suggestion. I don't have to have had
> weird experiences in the past to be aware of what is happening to
> OraNA right now. Posts containing good content (not all of it
> technical) are being shunted at a rate of knots down the page and off
> the page, because of the constant arrival of new me-too '8 things'
> posts. That's a practical consequence and not one I just made up.

Not so odd, it explains a lot of the militarism against spam here. I had a very wise boss once, he was responsible for dealing with the most pissed off customers, and he would maintain his composure with such assumptions, and usually be able to ascertain what the real problem was as a result.

>
> The response to this has been (from Tim Hall) "It's my blog and I can
> do what I like with it" (stuff anyone affected by what he does with
> it, too, I suppose).
>
> Tim's other thoughtful response was "I don't care. I never asked to be
> included in the blog aggregator in the first place". Very civically
> minded.

At one point, I was considering aggregating oracle-l into a newsgroup, as I don't like the available formats. Trying to be nice, I asked Steve Adams if I could, and he said no. I honored that, but I think Tim has a reasonable point here. It may be too much to ask to hold content providers to every possible format that is downstream of their publishing. And what really would stop me from ignoring Steve's wishes?

To use a somewhat ridiculous example, I was at a pizza party for some kids Saturday night, and one of the other parents was showing me his crack, er Blackberry. (He's a SS DBA, and was getting problem texts, I kept the chuckling to myself). So I told him about twitter, and told him to navigate to Awad's posts. It seems you have to log in to get the phone version, so we went to his regular twitter posts. Now, should I blame Eddie for a crapload of thumbnail images that take forever to load over a slow wireless connection onto a slow device?

The more I consider it, the more I think you are just totally wrong about that.

>
> The response (from Jake who started it all) was "filter out the posts
> you don't want to read"... once he tells me how I can do that onwww.orana.info, I'll certainly take that advice, but I suspect it
> might be just a bit tricky to filter stuff out of a webpage I don't
> control!

That should be a feature of aggregators, and google groups for that matter. A campaign for that might be a positive result of all this hoopla.

>
> When the "community" decides to behave in such an irrational fashion
> (in any other context, this exponential flood of content that prevents
> a site like OraNA publicising good content would be called a
> distributed denial of service attack), I simply want no part of it.
> Which is why the site and its content will remain inaccessible until
> some semblance of sanity prevails.

Well, as we're not allowed to say, the difference between rape and seduction is salesmanship.

>
> Those who dislike not having my material available should perhaps
> consider that I dislike not having OraNA available to me in a fit and
> usable state. And as far as I can tell, so far, I'm not alone in that.

Should it not be obvious to anyone, a google search can be used to access the material in cache.

I'd probably be with you if I used orana.

jg

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