At 03:05 AM 4/25/96 -0400, you wrote:

Excerpts from mail.fanfic: 24-Apr-96 Re: [FanFic] Spam & Overrea.. by
Aaron Stolz@direct.ca 

Two comments:  there is a BIG difference between a 400K fanfic and 400 1K
spams spread out over 4-5 days.  The spams take longer to filter and
delete.  Lots of people don't have facilities to sort email by topic.
Myself, the program that does my sorting barely works, and it's VERY slow,
so I try to avoid putting too many search strings in it.  And second,
the people with the 500K inboxes have every right to be on this mailing
list.  READ THE NAME OF THE LIST.  It says "fan fiction", right?  Yes,
they might be in for mailbox overflows on a regular basis.  But if that's
going to happen, then it should be from the fanfics, not the spam.

Answer me this question truthfully:  would you rather spend ten seconds
deleting a 400k fic you're not interested in reading, or 15 minutes
deleting 400 1K spams that you have to *look* at to be sure that you don't
want them?

To tell you the truth...I don't delete any of my mail anymore. and it's
just as easy (if a little slower) for me to delete 400 spam posts as a
single fanfic...Eudora is good for that...

Here's something else to consider, then.  Not everyone has access to a
place to store their saved email, other than their accounts (I have no
computer of my own, just the campus machines to work with), and not
everyone can use Eudora like you can.  I can't.  CMU's email system isn't
compatible with it.  For me, deleting 400 spam posts is a LOT slower.

I realize that...but I feel that I have to say this..."Floppy disk"

Next question:  is it too much to ask to just keep it manageable for
those people who don't like a huge amount of spam, even if you don't
mind?  It all boils down to a matter of common courtesy.

[snippage]

...soon after you left, WWolf asked for the levels of
spam to be curbed because of the volume.  It was right around then,
anyway.  Again, see above.  If you've been keeping track of the replies,
you will have seen that a lot of the people here do not hold the same
appreciation of the level of spamming as you.  Please be courteous, and
keep it manageable.  Is that too much to ask?

No it isn't, but is it also too much to ask to actually tolerate the
Sigwar stuff like the potential fanfics they are?

WWolf didn't when the Poker Spam was in progress.  And that was even closer
to being a fanfic than this stuff is.  He asked it to leave the list.
Other than saying that, I'm not going to comment on this any more.

what IS this poker spam? Someone told me basically what it was (Bently I
think) but unless everyone got in on the act, I don't see how it could have
gotten tobe so much of a problem...

It might surprise you to know that *I* unsubbed for a little over half a
month because I couldn't handle the volume of email I was getting from
this list.  It got that bad.  I decided it wasn't worth it to take time
away from schoolwork, work work, and sleep to deal with the level of
spamming.  And I had a six meg inbox.  (it's nine, now; someone in
computer accounts likes me, I guess)

I noticed you didn't comment on this.

I didn't see anything to reply TO...you unsubbed, yes, In fact I think you
did for a week or so when I was still on too...and someone in computer
accounts noticed that you were on a mailing list and took pity on you (at
least that's what I thought when I read that) and upped your mailbox limit...so?

Well, there are my replies to that...and I maintain that people with
500K mailboxes *really* shouldn't be subscribed to places this busy in
the first place, unless they're actually writing somthing.  If what
they're writing needs work, for a time THAT will be what is talked
about th most on the ML...that's how it was 5 months ago and I don't
see any reason why it should be any different now.

Are you saying that, because you enjoy the spam and will likely keep on
spamming regardless of how other people feel about it, you'll not have
any qualms denying this list to people with small inboxes who can't cope
with that level of spamming?  THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING.

If I don't spam, I'd be a lurker...refer to what I just typed above...and
I really don't care if someone has a small mailbox or a huge one, this
would be a fairly busy list without ANY spam whatsoever...if someone
isn't prepared to have to do some weeding, why are they subscribed to a
mailing list?

Maybe you didn't understand what I was asking, then.  I'm prepared, and
even happy, to do a little weeding.  But 200+ posts a day??  It was up
there for a while.  I am NOT prepared to delve through that every day.
I don't have time, like some people.  The ones with 200K and 500K
mailboxes probably don't, either.

I agree that 200 a day is getting into big-league SPAM...even I have my
limits...about 75 posts a day is fine with me, but anyless and I start to
worry now :)

Heck, for about a half-month most of what we talked
about once upon a time was "What color should Sylvies suit be in BGZ?"
(I love what ya finally chose BTW SkyKnight!)

Ever thought about how easy it would have been to take that to private
email?  Ever take the time to think how much of the list would actually
*care*??  Really, I'm being quite serious.  The less people on the list
who would be interested in whatever you're considering posting, the more
you should consider restricting it to private email.

How can you really take a real discussion to private E-mail when many of
the people have readers that don't support multiple sendings (Like mine
was, I could only carbon copy to ONE person on the readerI had to use
back then...PMail)

Sorry to hear that.  I guess there are even worse email readers than mine
out there, then.  In that case, suggestions could have been forwarded to
SkyKnight, and the result posted to the list.  That would have worked
fine, and kept the spam to a minimum.  In the Poker Spam's case, it wasn't
even that easy, and WWolf still told us to take it off the list.  I had
to deal with CCing the posts to all 13-15 of us.  (it varied)

About the only redeeming quality of PMail 1.0 was that it worked...you
couldn't add in a new E-mail address unless you got a message first or you
were prepared to do a lot of digging, you could only CC to one person, it
completely refused to have the "reply-To:" set to the list and not me and
still work...but it worked...which is more than I could say for my old
providers irc program(kept on giving me segmentation faults and dumping the
core), newsgroups (I couldn't post anything), I had to manually edit the
filenames after I FTP'd them into somthing that DOS would accept(I only had
2 megs RAM...my windows FTP program worked kinda but had to many errors the
files might as well have been in swahili instead of GZipped)...the only
really good think about that account what that I had 80megs+ in my mailboxes
and they didn't bat an eye...*shrug*

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

                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I had somthing all ready to sla this, but I came to my senses...I'm tired
and sick, be gentle
Aaron Stolz-astolz@direct.ca E-mail me anytime! I'm on for HOURS on end all the 
time, so you might even get a reply soon after you send it! *******************