Feeling rather down tonight, I mentioned on IRC that "I hope the sig war
gets killed on the FFML".  The reactions, or rather, overreactions, I got
were none too pleasant.  After explaining that I'd sent a message to the
list in general, calling for at least a toning down of the sig war and
related spam, a couple of very vociferous complainers hammered at me with
things along the lines of:

"Why don't you just delete the spam like everyone else!"

"I like the fanfics!  I like the spam!  It's what made the FFML fun!"

"You moron, it's the wedding topic, not the sig war topic, that's the
problem!"

"You can't get rid of all of the spam.  The only way to do that is to
have a moderated ML."

I'll address each of these in turn.


Why not just delete the spam.


There are several reasons.  First of all, I'm not complaining about spam
in general.  I'm complaining about volume.  By that, I don't mean the size
of the posts, I mean the *amount* of them.  If I can't even read all of the
mail I'm getting because 90% of it is spam, and I'm forced to delete most
of it *without* reading it, I stand a pretty fair chance of deleting some
important stuff by accident.  I've done this several times recently.

WWolf made it clear back when we had the "belt war competition", as one
poster so eloquently put it, over the posting stats, that that amount of
spamming "better not happen".  I have to agree, and I'm forced to admit
that what we have right now is that level of spamming.  There are several
different offending topics, along with a general tendency to spam, but
I'm not going to point any fingers.  I'm going to ask, POLITELY, like
WWolf did, that you guys keep it under control.  I'm not out to make
enemies (as it seems I have, unfortunately), I'm out to have fun, like
the rest of you.  That brings me to the next comment.


"I like the fanfics!  I like the spam.  It's what made the ML fun!"


Yes, I agree.  A lot of the early chatter on the ML was spam.  But you
also have to consider, we had about a third of the people we do now.  Back
then, half of the ML spamming was still manageable, and could be reasonably
read without having to resort to holding down the delete key.  It might
not have been pleasant for some, but it was manageable.  Now however, we
have a lot more people here, and hence a lot more spam.  When WWolf had to
move the list from the server at his work to his home machine, it wasn't
because his boss was being vindictive.  It was for a reason.  All that
spam took up a lot of bandwidth, and it was starting to affect other
things.

I know you guys just can't stop chattering.  There's no way to do that
outside of a moderated ML, as someone commented.


"You can't get rid of all of the spam.  The only way to do that is to have
a moderated ML."


I'm not asking for the spam to cease altogether.  I enjoy it myself.  But
the amount of volume it's creating is causing problems for just about
everyone.  WWolf still has the same bandwidth problems, only now they're
on his own machine.  Those FFMLers with 500 k and 1 Meg accounts probably
aren't too happy, either.  I'm not saying this only because of the size
of their accounts, but because they can delete a 200 k fanfic they aren't
interested in a lot easier than 200 1 k spams, and in a lot less time.

So again.  I'm not asking for the spam to cease.  I'm asking for a little
common courtesy and respect.  I'm sure that's not too much to ask.

Again, if you bothered reading this far without deleting my post, thanks
for listening to me rant.

Damon Casale, scyth@andrew.cmu.edu

				* Love *
                 Between two people, there is nothing that
                      can draw them closer together