Spam?

Hi everyone,

I have a deep but yet simple question to everyone: when a post is considered spam and when it isnt?

Cuz sometimes I see people advertising their products (which, to my understanding, is called "spam") and everyone is happy. And sometimes I see people posting the same kind of advertising and they receive a stream of complains and flames... This confuses my simple and logical mind :)

Thanks! Martin

Hahaha good point, well I guess since in a semantics group... nobody does spam! What would they advertise? Well hmmm they can advertise books, possibly, but that wouldnt be semantics, but rather literature... anyway, thats not my point.

My point is since in THIS group, people post stuff that contains advertising in some way, sometimes its treated as spam and sometimes its not, and yeah in both cases its VoIP related.

Let's put it with an example, if I am a carrier and I post a message: Visit my website there you got cheap rates and cool stuff, etc, etc. Would that be c> Sounds like turing machine logic

And by the way, Im not calling "spammer" to anyone. I really don't care what people do they're free to do whatever they want I wont complain.

This is since Ive noticed you posted an ad today, Im not calling you spammer, actually I believe what you did is a legal and logical way to let people know about your services, etc. I just wanna know when do people in this group would consider something is spam and when it isnt. So please dont take it as I am against you, all the opposite, I agree with you! (Yeah man, we're all friends :)

Basically I just wanna know the "dos" and "d> Sounds like turing machine logic

Thanks : ), I just jumped without thinking by throwing up a quick notice. I should have checked in more detail I guess..

I think going back to the line between between spam n not it comes down to context.. like for example.. we are all host to googles interface of newsgroups.. as part of that service, they serve you with relevant ads... if these ads weren't relevant , they might be considered spam... I think your thinking and question are much more important that what it initially seemed as I have been thinking.. when is spam good ? I get certain emails that occasionlly peak my interest.. if I was never exposed to these ( say for example new products etc ) and blocked everyhting , then my scope of experience is narrowed.

now I do think that if i see that same ad or something similar once a day every day for 6 months.. I would be getting a little annoyed..

so maybe spam = "repetitive non-relevant information" to the viewer

feedback ?

If it's a group that does not permit advertising, yes. Most groups have a charter, check it out before posting.

Ivor

We are? What makes you think that?

miguel

Well about Google's interface of newsgroups, I can say it has saved my life, since my ISP's news server (which, ironically, they dont know they have!!!... yeah, its a long story, I'll explain in another post) has crashed, or something, the point is that when I open the news with my email client (well I am not spamming when I say... Mozilla Thunderbird! :) it is just blank, well anyway...

I want to say that I agree with my pseudo-anonymous friend (well I just know you're "ekstesi@g..." :) and I want to add something interesting that I just thought while I was typing this post... if you do any kind of advertising with OSS, for example, a typical line in your signature, under your name, like "Linuz Rulex" or "Firrrrefox!!!", or a post talking about an OSS project, well far from being annoying, people will think you're cool, some Guru of OSS (and maybe you have nothing to do with any OSS project), meanwhile, if in your signature you got something like "God Save MicroZoft" (and hey!, this is just an example, I dont intend to offend anyone : ) some people will consider it some kind of spam, even if you dont work with this company and you're just a fan (drunk, ehem :).

Funny indeed it is... you can go to any group and post something about OSS, talking about a project you're working on, asking people to try it, etc, you have few/null chances of being flamed or called spammer.

So we can say, only if your ad is of non-commercial nature you'll not be flamed? Well this is not completely true, its not only if it is related or not to the group you're posting, but also about WHAT you're advertising. For example, go to misc.health.alternative and post one of those emails we receive every day about those "cool pills" for losing weight, or for "helping" guys :)... and even though its perfectly related, well they will probably ban you...

By the other side, it is possible to advertise something in all groups and not be considered spam, as long as what you're advertising doesnt offend anyone and you are not repeating it annoyingly...

So the definition of spam becomes kind of complicated... I would extend your definition to "repetitive non-relevant or offensive information".

And finally, yeah I guess this is a crazy topic to talk about in a VoIP group, I know, I started it, but it just became interesting and fun (at least I had fun).

Now I feel my question has been answered so thanks!

I don't find it that funny; if it's not a commercial posting (for instance, if you are posting about open source software) then it doesn't fit many people's definition of spam.

Also, the incentive structure is different. Most of the spam I see comes from chumps who have signed up for some multi-level marketing program and are hoping to get clicks to their affiliate link. There's not a whole lot of this in the open-source world (because not much money is changing hands) so chumps have no reason to flood newsgroups with their crap.

miguel

One good new, now I can post again with Thunderbird (they fixed whatever happened : ).

Yes, but I was talking about the "repetitive non-relevant or offensive information" definition, maybe we had to add the word "commercial" somewhere in that definition? I wanted to emphasis actually it is not only non relevant and repetitive but also "commercial" what tends to annoy people.

Well this is relative, actually I have seen a lot of that spam but if you tell me the word "spam" I will first think of those thousands of "blue pill" and "personals" (ie, find a girl) ads I get, and I swear I never asked for any of those; also I can say I definitely dont need them, I have a wonderful girlfriend and I dont need any pill, (but knowing Usenet, someone will post something to make fun of that line... but I just had to say it!!! :) Also those ones offering mortgages, yeah I almost forget them. However I think this varies with the email provider you are using and so on, my case was using my Yafoo account, (I like to say Yafoo because a japanese guy I knew in Argentina, friend of mine... well another long story :), I guess most of their webmail accounts receive the same or similar type of spam, since my bro has an account there and he gets the same.

A couple days ago I was reading how spam causes millionaire loses in the world (yeah because of wasting bandwidth, space in the servers and so on), specially in countries that haven't been deploying filters (generally the developing countries), this is kind of sad.

Anyway I try to take all that in the most ironic and positive way, I know its actually not very funny but I dont know what I could do to help it...