In article <378B6888.531A3D2 at u.arizona.edu>,
Paul Muhlrad <pmuhlrad at u.arizona.edu> wrote:
>I don't know why I even follow this NG anymore. It's 99% spam.
>Meanwhile, I still haven't gotten an answer to my ACeDB question I
>posted a few weeks ago. I suggest disbanding bionet.software.acedb and
>finding a less public forum for discussing acedb.
Most low-volume newsgroups are 99% spam. It's nothing special to this
group.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem, neither of which
involve disbanding the newsgroup, which I think would be a bad thing.
1) Use a newsreader that allows you to kill articles that are obvious
spam. For instance, mine automatically discards any message cross-posted to
more than five newsgroups, or with certain phrases in the title,
particularly XXX and $$$. I'm also looking into killing articles
based on obvious garbage e-mail addresses. Many newsreaders will do
this for you. See www.newsreaders.com for detailed lists of
newsreaders available for various computer platforms.
2) We could moderate the newsgroup, so that postings have to be
approved by a moderator. This involves someone volunteering, and a
vote being taken. I'm not sure how one goes about this, I'm not that
much of a Usenet expert.
The fact that no-one answered your post is unfortunate, but maybe
no-one knew the answer. I expect the regular readership of this group
is very low (possibly a couple of hundred people world-wide) so this
is quite likely. If this were a mailing list rather than a newsgroup,
I don't see why that would change.
Tim.
