Wirt Atmar wrote:

<snip>
> On the whole, I think the automatic archiving attributes of DejaNews
> substantially outweigh the disadvantages of having people pick up your email
> addresses in order to send you spam. DejaNews is an extraordinary resource
> when used well.
>
> The choice is -- and always will be -- to either have a private list, one that
> people have to stumble onto because they know somebody who knows somebody --

Wirt, I found this list because Alfredo Rego forwarded a question I
e-mailed to him to others, one of whom (Charles Finley, I believe)
posted it here. If Alfredo and others on HP3000-L hadn't explicitly told
me about it I wouldn't have known it existed, and I use all kinds of
search engines (though, I must admit, not DejaNews).

> or to have the HP3000 discussion out in the open. Steve Dirickson votes for a
> closed list. On the whole, I think that that's a mistake.

I don't think these two are mutually exclusive choices. As I just
explained, having your posts available on news groups doesn't
necessarily mean your discussion is "out in the open." There's *still* a
lot of blind luck involved when searching for info on the HP3000.

> Spam isn't going to go away, no matter what you do, ...

All I want to do is limit the spammers. I don't know how to shut down
those who prey on the newsgroups, sucking up e-mail addresses like
mosquitos and irritating those whom they've bitten in this way. (And
like a mosquito bite, spam tends to irritate long after the spammer has
sucked up your address.) But why should we give them an open screen
door, saying essentially, "Here, if you spam this *one address* you have
a guaranteed pool of recipients"?

We should not. IMO one should not be able to send to the e-mail list
unless they're an authenticated, subscribed member. Why is this such a
difficult/distasteful concept? Put it another way: how many of you have
caller id? Why? Same reason: just because some slob has your phone
number doesn't give him the right to invade your home with his sales
pitch!

>                                                    ...until someone starts
> charging you for every packet that you send out. Then, at least, it will be a
> higher class of spam.

I'm with Doug Werth on this one. Seems to me the people with the most
money are the professional porn peddlers. If you knock out the
small-time operators selling beanie babies and the like, what you are
left with is the lowest class of spammer, not the highest. (Also, I hope
no one starts charging me for the bandwidth of my rants! :)

Just my .02
Patrick
--
Patrick Santucci
Technical Services Systems Programmer
KVI, a division of Seabury & Smith