At 02:06 AM 9/16/96 -0400, you wrote:

You guys are royally pissing me off.  I've asked nicely for you to stop
spamming, I've yelled.

Last chance.  Quit the spam or I moderate the list.

To: The members of the FANFIC ML

I've been unhappily awaiting the message above; although I feared that WW 
would just shut down the ML, rather than go through the hideous task of 
having to moderate this list.  Undoubtably, at least in my opinion, what has 
pissed him off so badly is the ratio of SPAM to C&C andfanfics.  It's very 
bad!  New people who are attracted to this ML are put off by the sheer 
amount of moronic spam and leave. The older members either bitch (sadly, 
uselessly) or start lurking, or, and much worse, they too go away.

I've become a lurker over the past few months for health reasons, but now
I too am not in any hurry to actively rejoin the ML because of the seemingly 
endless irrelevant postings.  

WW's original idea, when he set up this mailing list, was supurb - it was to be 
an ML designed for both new and long term fanfic authors to share their
writings, AND C&C each others work.  His idea has become obscured by all 
of the pointless posts that seem to have become the norm lately.

Spam is not all bad, especially some of the better 'spam' fics, BUT, it must not
dominate the ML, or, for that matter, anything more than a small portion of it, 
or we all lose.  Stupid SPAM is stupid SPAM - a waste of bandwidth and the 
then the time it takes to delete the crap from your download.

Just how long do you think WW is going to put up with the hassle of all the
work 
it takes to administer this ML, plus, the prospect of now having to moderate
all the 
posts (quite often in excess of a 100 messages a day!) on this ML?  Guess
what - 
not very damned long!!  Kindly remember, Thom Youngblood also has a life, and
the right to enjoy it!

You want to SPAM, you live and die for SPAM; then go to private email and leave
the rest of us alone to enjoy the FANFIC ML, not the godamned SPAM ML...

johnd