Re: One way to combat spam in sci.math ...

On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:23:35 -0800, The World Wide Wade
<aderamey.addw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <fm3jbg$9r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"rancid moth" <rancidmoth@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"The World Wide Wade" <aderamey.addw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:aderamey.addw-DDF22A.16102808012008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
would be to include a code word, that we all agree on, in the subject
line. For example: (Newton). Eg, the subject line of this post in this
scheme would be

One way to combat spam in sci.math ... (Newton)

We could then create a filter in our newsreaders to kill all posts in
sci.math whose subject line did not include "(Newton)".

Given my comments about ASCII and the sorting algorithms (its somewhere in
the main body of this thread), prefixing the subject in hope that
_everyone's_ news reader will sort it correctly doesn't seem applicable. So
a suffix & a filter would seem to be the only consistent way forward.

Yes, sorting is not going to do it.

Well, how about a work around ...

Use the marking string "M -- " (M for math).

That way, for those newsreaders that ignore non-alpha characters when
sorting, the marked posts would at least clump together
alphabetically.

For those newsreaders that don't ignore the hyphens when sorting, they
would sort as

"M -- "

and for those newsreaders that do ignore the hyphens when sorting,
they would sort as

"M " (an "M", followed by 2 spaces)

Either way, they should clump, when sorted by subject.

Thus, for manual filtering, the user would do a subject sort, delete
all the bad ones -- those before the "M -- " clump, and those after,
and then switch back to a normal sort (by date, or whatever is the
desired default).

For automated filtering, just match on "M --", keep those, delete
everything else (or mark the others in some way for possible later
browsing).

I tend to favor a suffix now. It's advantage is it's out of the way,
and sci.math would look pretty much as it does now -
minus the spam.

I just filtered on " --" and got zero hits in sci.math.

Ok, but why does it have to be a suffix?

I use a big font size for easy visibility which means, for any long
subject line, I would not see the suffix without scrolling right.

A prefix would make the marked subject lines instantly recognizable,
thus allowing for quick visual filtering.

As I write, 17 out of the most recent 30 posts to sci.math are spam.

Yep, the writing is on the wall. The spam has been getting
progressively worse. As a simple, quick fix, I think an experiment
using marked subject lines is worth a shot. If it doesn't work, we can
simply abandon it and try something else.

How about using "M -- " as a prefix?

(an "M", followed by a space, 2 hyphens, and a space).

quasi
.

Relevant Pages

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