no message, the title made my point.

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 11, 1999

Answers

There is no webmaster for this forum, other than me. We're all adults here, and we all have busy lives. I try to scan as many posts as I can, and I delete the ones that are obviously obscene; but I just don't have the time or resources to track down IP addresses and tell their wemasters to cancel things because of public spamming. Trolls and spammers cause temporary disruptions here, but if we ignore them, they tend to go away on their own, just as a child throwing a tantrum will stop if nobody pays attention...

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), April 11, 1999.

Ed....right on! Just checked in and read your post and loved the example you gave re: children and tantrums!...So very true!

-- Old Gramma (Gotitincalif@webtv.net), April 11, 1999.

Agreed, which leaves those spammers that visit this and other forums for no other purpose than to collect email addresses to add to their spamming list. They don't have to participate.

Don't know how many of those there are. Any guesses?

-- LP (soldog@hotmail.com), April 11, 1999.

In typical "SPAMMING" schemes, someone collects email addresses (or buys a list) and "SPAMS" emails everyone on the list. Naturally, this "junk-email" is not popular!

Are normal posts on this system (which automatically emails people who requested automatic posts) being referred to as "SPAM" in the case where the post is highly objectionable?

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@Anonymous99.xxx), April 11, 1999.

SPAM in public forums such as USENET, Compuserve/AOL, and web boards are posts which are deliberately repetitive (it's not just sending to lots of people, it's posting to lots of threads and/or posting repeatedly).

Not surprisingly this almost never shows up except when someone decides their personal agenda is so stupendously important that the conversation of every other person on every other thread ought to be interrupted with it, whether it has anything to do with the talk in progress or not.

This is like being at a dinner party, having a nice conversation about anything with the fellow next to you, and having some loud bully just walk up between you and your conversation partner, not even say hello, and just start ranting in your face about {x}.

It is 'barging into' someone else's conversation without anything constructive or relevent to add, it is rude, and it violates what little civilization the 'Net actually has.

SPAM is multiple postings to people who don't want to hear it, who did not ask to hear it, and who are interrupted by the postings. Whether those postings come email or are on a public board makes no difference.

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), April 12, 1999.