Since my surgeries, I've been looking for ways to simplify and improve the Telecom Digest work flow, and I'd appreciate the readers' help with this question. I'd like to hear ideas as to ways we can improve the anti-spam measures here at The Digest.
Sorting "ham" from spam emails on the input queues is going well: we've had good results with the current practice of putting "[Telecom]" (or "[Obfuscate]" or "[Anonymous]" or "[NFP]" {Not for publication}) in the subject lines, but that method doesn't work for new posters, and is also error-prone because existing contributors often forget to include it, so I have to check the spam folders regularly.
I've been obfuscating and/or removing all the digest's "real" email addresses from Usenet posts, and although that makes it harder for new contributors to join, I feel it's essential to keep the spam count low: the old addresses received upwards of 500 spam emails per day, and now we're down below ten. This raises the question of how best to publicize the address that new contributors should use to send in their first post:
- I could include a human-readable form of the address as a postscript on all posts, once per month or so.
- I could refer posters to a web page containing the info.
- I might ask new posters to use something like Google Groups.
I favor option (1), because the others require web access, and some companies don't allow employees to use the web. Are there other ways to go about it?
The two bastions of spam-prevention, i.e., keywords in subject lines and hiding submission addresses, are working well, but I need to know if they're _TOO_ effective. What do _you_ think?