From pdh@u.washington.edu Sun Nov  2 23:22:02 1997
Received: from jason02.u.washington.edu (root@jason02.u.washington.edu [140.142.76.8])
          by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with ESMTP
	  id XAA40912 for <indknow@lists.u.washington.edu>; Sun, 2 Nov 1997 23:22:01 -0800
Received: from saul5.u.washington.edu (pdh@saul5.u.washington.edu [140.142.83.3])
          by jason02.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with ESMTP
	  id XAA40156; Sun, 2 Nov 1997 23:22:00 -0800
Received: from localhost (pdh@localhost)
          by saul5.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.04) with SMTP
	  id XAA04951; Sun, 2 Nov 1997 23:21:59 -0800 (PST)
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 23:21:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Department of Zoology <pdh@u.washington.edu>
To: John Selsky <jselsky@commerce.otago.ac.nz>
cc: indknow@u.washington.edu
Subject: Comments on Commercial Ads
In-Reply-To: <199711030034.NAA13888@galadriel.otago.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.96.971102230355.26527A-100000@saul5.u.washington.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


> To the indknow listserv manager:
> 
> Commercial advertising on the list???!!!   NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> John Selsky

   Commercial advertisements are not allowed as part of the charter
   of the INDKNOW list. However, as many of you are already aware, there
   is not much I can do about it as a list manager. INDKNOW is an
   open list, and anyone who subscribes to the list may post to it. 
   At this point, there is no moderation of list messages. I have done
   what I can: you have to be a subscriber to post, and I create filters
   to weed out posts from offending addresses. 

   This isn't a perfect system. The snake oil salesmen have a habit of
   shapeshifting - they specialize in setting up temporary accounts which
   they fully intend to discard. Even a very small success rate for their
   pyramid schemes and worthless tripe is enough to recoup the $20 or so
   it takes to create an account for a month, when they send out tens- to
   hundreds-of-thousands of messages for virtually nothing. Sending mail
   bombs or hate mail to the offending sender is not really helpful.
   The address may be forged. If not forged, it may be from one of these
   temporary accounts, and the sender may rely on fax or telephone 
   responses, or the first few hundred that come to them before the flood
   of angry letters. Often, the mailbombs just hurt the pitiable service
   provider that has been duped into providing the account, and the 
   service provider's customers.

   There are some anti-spam groups (I'll try to come up with a URL),
   and believe me there are efforts to try to come up with a solution to
   the problem, which is becoming significant (I have read estimates that
   as much as 1/4-1/3 of the Internet traffic in some domains consists of
   spam - unwanted advertising). For now, be patient and use the delete
   key. We could go to a moderated list, but I'm a little reluctant to do
   this unless I could get some moderation help. 

   Regards,
   Preston Hardison  

.