In article , wrote:
Note to the esteemed moderator -- you might want to consider how a _new_ reader of the newsgroup is supposed to divine: (a) the need to use a 'magic word', (b) =how= to use it, or (c) *WHATITHEHELL* it is.
You have invented an extremely effective way to 'discourage' new people from participating in the group -- 'ignore them and they'll go away'.
Consider the _vast_ amount (*snicker*) of spam you get with either a 'Telecom digest' subject line, or the subject line of one of the articles as posted to USENET. You -can- safely put the 'magic word' on all the _outgoing_ messages, so that anyone who simply 'replies' to the message has the appropriate incantations done for them automatically.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In order for me to divine how a new reader is supposed to figure out this divine news group, first we need to have YOU divine the volume and nature of messages received in this divine news group each day: Let's say there are about 500-600 messages each day purporting to be legitimate. Actually, maybe five or ten are legitimate, the other 590-595 are spam. That's only the count of messages which the spam filters (procmail and spam assassin) failed to catch.Instead of using your 'extremely effective way of discouraging them from participating' (and really, do _you_ want spammers participating?), I still send them a note saying their submission has been rejected. I then manually scan those approximatly 595-600 items, ocassionally finding some _NON-SPAM LEGITIMATE_ item, rarely, but ocassionally, and of course I use it when I find it. Some readers say I am too loose about that part of it: Are you suggesting I should be looser still in my manual selection of what appears here? My experience has been that when I widely publish the secret word (as you seem to be implying I should do) my work load only increases. That is, if the magic word was 'abracadabra' and it was published here daily, not only would you Usenetters have the incantations done for you, but so would all the spammers. In other words, messages with the subject line "This is the telecom subject" would begin appearing in my system as "Abracadabra This is the telecom subject" (or perhaps just 'abracadabra') with the remaining five thousand or so words being the same foolishness as before; instead of me being able to quickly scan the header and first few words of the 'questionable message' and devote most of my attention to the chosen messages for the day, I'd be going through dozens of 'abracadabra' messages tossing them out. Instead of being able to 'speed read' the subject line of dozens of messages at once and tossing them, you'd have me read through the same number of messages all incanting 'abracadabra' at me and wind up tossing them anyway, is that it?
If someone writes here (new user, or whoever) I generally catch them and deal with them, do I not? But I'll tell you what I can do, Robert: Since you are a much more experienced Usenetter than myself, I can see to it that all my rejects get re-routed to whichever moderated or _unmoderated_ Usenet group you suggest, where you and other Usenetters can pick through them looking for the rare new user -- innocent and virginal and all that rot -- which I somehow missed and deal with the poor guy appropriatly. You can just let him know you are taking over for the Moderator Who Doesn't Give an Iota (of much anything), and that you will see to it his intelligent messages, et al will be dealt with properly and appropriately.
ObRobert Snicker: *snicker*. PAT]