[SpamCop-List] Re: Newsgroup Charter?

[michael lefevre]

"Sue Morton" <AppyFace3000> wrote in message
news:95bsnc$sd3$1
> Good Morning Mr. News Admin and Everyone Else!
>
> I was just reading through a thread in the .help newsgroup from a soul
that
> wanted to know why SpamCop didn't report his spam.  Unfortunately, he
also
> committed all sorts of heinous crimes against the newsgroup in the
process
> (attaching a spam, full spam, wrong group for including a spam, etc.
etc.
> etc.)

actually that all comes under just the one "crime"... :-)  i still don't
know where that weird email the poster got back came from, and the stuff
about attachments was barking up the wrong tree as well, because he
didn't attach anything, it was all inline...

[snip]
> So get to the point, Sue.  OK.  In other newsgroups I frequent, at
regular
> intervals (once a month, typical) a Newsgroup Charter is posted across
all
> groups.  It is not meant as end-all be-all but rather is a brief
synopsis of
> the rules -- covering what can be posted in each group, conduct, etc.
>
> I wonder if that practice would help here.  [snip]

might do...

the current theory (as i understand it), is that as the spamcop
newsgroups are on a private server, anyone reading them must have found
them by way of the spamcop website, in particular:
http://spamcop.net/forum.shtml

and that page, in theory, contains all the info that people need,
including the rules and stuff...

still assuming people came in via the website, before they got to the
forums page, they should passed the help page, which, before it gets to
the forum bit, has a search box (which searches the newsgroup archives
and the FAQ) and a direct link to the FAQ...

so, anyone making it as far as the mailing list or newsgroup should (so
the theory goes) already have seen everything they need to see to know
the rules and not ask questions which have already been asked...

if people aren't seeing that stuff, then either it's because they're not
bothering to read stuff as they should, or because they're being
referred here by other means...

i wouldn't advocate bunging up the newsserver / archive with a huge
posting, but it might be a good idea to have a regular posting of a
brief pointer to the FAQ, the rules and the purpose of each group...

> Last comment.  I posted a question about a spam in one of the groups,
then
> posted the full spam in .spam.  My question was answered, but I was
also
> told "you did not need to post the full spam.  Just the tracking URL
was
> sufficient".  How would I know this?  No explanation was given and
since it
> miffed me I just let it go.

i agree that although the rules say to post spam in the spam group and
only tracking URLs in other groups, they don't say _when_... that could
be improved...

i can only think of a couple of cases where it _is_ necessary to post
the whole spam... in the huge majority of cases, the issue is related to
the headers, so a tracking URL is all that's needed... (tracking URLs
show the headers, and also include any links that spamcop offered to
report)

in cases where there's a link in the spam that you want to refer to and
spamcop didn't pick it up, then you can just post the tracking URL and
that link... in cases where there's (for example) a funny statement or
disclaimer in the spam, then you can post a tracking URL and quote that
statement or disclaimer...

cases where you might need to quote the whole spam body are if the whole
thing is encoded, or if it's all script... or if spamcop failed to grab
a link from the spam body (if it's a parsing problem, then having the
whole thing is useful)... or if you want an opinion on the whole content
("i just got this email - is it spam?" kind of thing...)

> Deputies etc. I know you are very tired of answering the same issues
over
> and over and over again.  But would you please include an explanation?
Make
> up a form letter and paste it in.  Or point to the Newsgroup Charter
if we
> have one.  Thanks.

although i don't do it as much as i could, i do quite often copy and
paste bits of my previous posts, or just pointers to the FAQ...

ideally, it should be possible to answer those kinds of questions with
just a link to the FAQ and nothing else... unfortunately, some
particular FAQ pages (e.g. the "spamcop wants to report to my own
admin"), i don't feel cover all the bases at the moment... and things
like the hybris worm (snow white/sexyfun) and the "why won't spamcop
process this" (it's because spamcop can't find an address for the
chinese relay) do come up a lot, but aren't covered by the FAQ...

michael