[antlr-interest] Re: Not moderating == not professional

[Jeff Vincent]

I believe Ter is capable of working parsing miracles and would most
definitely rather he spend time doing that (ANTLR 3.0) and so would he
(just a guess on my part ;-).  The solution is then to delegate some of
those responsibilities.  However, it's Ter's list and he would have to
feel confident (trust) that the person(s) allowed to moderate would do
it to his satisfaction and are also willing participants.  If he chooses
not to moderate new users, the we can opt out of the list of our own
free will.
 
There are varying levels of access for delegated moderators on
yahoogroups.  I personally believe that simply enabling new member
approval on the list, the SPAM wpuld be cut about 99%, just because the
joining process is more involved and spammer's are lazy SOB's out for a
quick buck and are usually using e-mail accounts that either don't exist
or are not ones they monitor.  It would then be easy to root out and
delete any existing members that are there to spam us.
 
So, my suggestion would be to switch the list options to require
approval to join and make sure that only members can post.  Then give a
couple of existing, willing, able, and trustworth list members rights to
approve/disallow new members.  I believe that all membership moderators
will receive a copy of the new membership request e-mail's that includes
embedded web URL's to either allow or reject the new user.  I don't
believe it would take much additional time to work through new member
requests, nor to identify blatant abusers and delete them, especially if
these tasks are shared/offloaded from Ter's plate.
 

My old recreational lists lists on yahoogroups required approval to
join.  I had a few people try to join that were obviously not interested
in the list.  For some prospective members that looked suspicious, but
could have been valid requests, I would send an e-mail (from a special
account) asking why they would want to join.  If I didn't get a reponse,
or the response didn't make sense, I would reject them.  I got very few
abusers and those that tried were squashed quickly.  It is fairly easy
process given that the e-mail request includes quick links to allow or
reject the new user.
 
We should also start reporting these idiots.  Here are some links that
I found regarding policies and abuse reporting forms.
 
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/abuse/abuse-02.html

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/groups/cgi_abuse
 
Just my $1.95.
 
Jeff

>>> open.zone at virgin.net 12/9/2003 2:18:59 AM >>>

--- In antlr-interest at yahoogroups.com, "lgcraymer" <lgc at m...> wrote:
> Ter--
> 
> I don't buy your argument.

It is a sound argument but I don't agree with his conclusion -
basically do nothing.

> I think that part of the reason for the 
> eroticy.com choice of user names is to avoid legal problems and that

> moderation might scare them off.  As long as they use names 
> indicative of content, they can claim that they were "invited" and 
> not be vulnerable to lawsuit.  Advertising SPAM is for the purpose 
> of making money; lawsuits are not a desired consequence on the part 
> of the spammer.

True but who has the time to track them down and file a suit?. Yahoo
certainly doesn't seem to care much.

No, I think the real motivator for introducing moderation is to
encourage spammers to look for an easier target first. Given the
number of mailing lists available, that should keep them at bay for a
while. Of course the question is, how would moderation impact the
communication here?. I know a group where it takes a couple of *days*
(or more) for a post to complete the moderation loop and appear on the
list. I'd rather have harmless occasional spam than that!

Cheers,

Micheal






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