ANST - Re: Spam?? was: Ahem.

j'lynn yeates jyeates at realtime.net
Wed May 19 10:19:24 PDT 1999


On 19 May 99, at 8:08, Kenneth J Mayer wrote:

copied from origional message: 

To:             	sca-west at rogues.net
Copies to:      	Beiskaldi at aol.com, wolffe at onslowonline.net, sca-
aethelmearc at andrew.cmu.edu,
       	sca-west at rogues.net, sca-caid at rogues.net, sca-east at indra.com,
       	sca-mists at thibault.org, northshield at minstral.org.maxson.com,
       	ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG, steps at antir.sca.org, outlands at list.unm.edu,
       	artemisia at server.umt.edu, sca-middle at midrealm.org,
       	atenveldt at atenveldt.org, dw-l at thenewplanet.com, trimaris at trimaris.org,
       	atlantia at atlantia.sca.org, SERapier at egroups.com

> Beiskaldi at aol.com wrote: 
> 
> I would recommend that the best practice would have been to send a  broad
> posting  saying the KWAR would be happening, and that updates would be on
> some particular list (SERapier? the Rialto? one created for the occasion?),
> and then send updates only to that list. 

more than likely the cause of the problem is in the header block that is 
included in this reply.  note the multiple carbon copies to many obvious 
elists?  a growing number of ISP's and list owners are barraged by commercial 
spammers using this method to "infect" as many distribution channels as 
possible and have erected automatic barriers to prevent it.  

many list owners themselves have list policies in place that do not allow cross 
posting to multiple lists, which is probably where the complaints to the ISP's 
(if that was the case) came from.  if these complaints were made, the most 
common denominator is the string "sca" which is probably what was used to 
filter.

there are better ways to get your message out than to use such a "shotgun" 
approach. in this case, it is probable that the method used is hurting a great 
many others by causing automatic spam-barracades to be erected at the ISP level 
that are filtering out and blocking addesses with the "sca" string involved (at 
least at the senders home access point ... which seems to fit the pattern 
reported) 

all should be aware of the repercussions in this media of such inadvertant 
actions ... if left unchecked it could easily spread to other access points 
nationwide and seriously impede the information flow.  

how to avoid such things?  when information relevent to a wide range of 
individuals needs passing via multiple elists from the "top-down", always send 
*1* message to *1* top-level list (ie: national or kingdom), if it exists, it 
should be to the dedicted "announcement" list (as we have) that serves that 
domain structure. 

inside a domain from the "bottom up" (the ansteorra hierarchy for example) it's 
more complicated and depends on domain structure and local / regional 
convention ... a good guideline is to decide the *minimum* posting points to 
get your message to the relevent target audience without flooding all available 
lists ...  with recent (and welcome) addition of the  "annnounce" list you have 
to decide is it a kingdom level announcment or kingdom level discussion, 
regional / local / specialty .... basically, stop and think and use yout best 
judgement - you'll usually be right.

'wolf 

... When we hunt, we all function with one mind
... - Boingo, Pedestrian Wolves
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