Ben Giddings
9/30/2003 8:33:00 PM
Josef ''Jupp'' Schugt wrote:
> What about adding this to the FAQ of the group so that one can simply
> refer to it if necessary? Here''s a draft (both English and German):
>
> - -------------------------------------------------------------------
> How to react to trolls and spam?
>
> Do not react at all or at least keep your reactions off-list -
> including complaints about spam and trolls. It''s hard enough to train
> a spam filter without people replying to and quoting spam and troll
> messages.
I think it''s a good idea to have a FAQ entry saying not to feed the trolls,
but I don''t think this is the right answer.
I think if you''re training a Bayesian filter, you need to give it the tough
cases too, so that it knows to distinguish between spam and ham. I also
think that some spam/troll discussion is necessary even if it is just "I
think this message is spam/a troll because of X, Y, Z so don''t reply to it".
It would also be useful to mention that because the list is public and is
mirrored from Usenet there are subtleties that people don''t seem to understand:
1) Crossposting frequently occurs on Usenet. Messages which may show up in
your inbox may in fact be usenet messages posted to 10 groups. This is
surely not a message you should reply to. This also explains a lot of
not-on-topic messages which you might see.
2) If you have any suspicion that a message may be spam or a troll, here
are some ways to check:
* Does the email address / return address look valid?
* Can you spot multiple newsgroups in the header which shouldn''t be there?
* Do a quick google / google news search on the name and see if he/she is a
known troll
* Is the content of the message either completely unrelated to Ruby or very
inflamatory?
3) Some typical trolls and troll subjects to watch out for are:
* Which is better, Ruby or _______
* Ruby sucks, here''s why
* Which is the best language for _________ <- typically cross-posted to
20 newsgroups
4) If a potential spam or troll message offends you, you''re probably not
alone. While it may be tempting to respond, unless you really think your
message will be appreciated by a large number of people on the list, resist
the temptation.
As for the idea of an off-topic Ruby mailing list... I don''t think that
would be worthwhile. If 1 in 20 messages on the list is off-topic, but
marked as such, I don''t mind, and my threshold for on-topicness is pretty
high. I think limited discussions of programming in general, even if it
isn''t Ruby-specific is useful here since it broadens everybody''s horizons.
I also don''t mind the occasional joking reply to an on-topic post... if
the list were just "How do I do X in ruby" and answers to that, it would
become pretty dry and limited.
As long as the subjects seem to do a pretty accurate job of reflecting the
content of the message it is an easy matter to skip over uninteresting ones.
Ben