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[Steve Rindsberg]

The Inquisition and all its nasty toys came hundreds of years too soon.
It was just *made* for idiots like this.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Jeff Chapman]

We're really getting socked here with spam on this newsgroup, Steve - do you
know who's in charge of maintaining this thing? Looks like the sysad's out
to lunch... way, way out to lunch...

Pretty embarrassing for a Microsoft group, that despite all their
technology, they can't or won't prevent a newsgroup from getting littered
with spam.

Off my soapbox now.

Jeff

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

We're really getting socked here with spam on this newsgroup, Steve - do you
know who's in charge of maintaining this thing? Looks like the sysad's out
to lunch... way, way out to lunch...

Pretty embarrassing for a Microsoft group, that despite all their
technology, they can't or won't prevent a newsgroup from getting littered
with spam.

While this and other NNTP newsgroups don't belong to Microsoft, its
Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) has tied its officeformac.com forums
into the Office for Mac and other Mac-related newsgroups. They are
responsible for allowing this massive amount of spam to come through.

You can corroborate this by referencing the headers in the spam
messages. 99% are coming from WebCrossing, which also produces the pages
for the officeformac.com forums. You'll see WebCrossing's name
referenced in the HTML source of the officeformac.com webpages:

Page produced by Web Crossing(tm)/Unix-6.0
(http://webcrossing.com/) for Microsoft-Mactopia

I have been complaining loudly to my contacts at MacBU. I suggest
everyone else who is annoyed with the amount of spam coming through
their forums do so as well.

If folks don't complain then MacBU won't consider this a problem or a
priority.

Use this form on their website:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback.mspx>

Suggested text:

"Please, enable spam prevention methods on the officeformac.com website
or disconnect your online forums from the Usenet newsgroups. The amount
of spam coming through your forums is negatively impacting my experience
in the newsgroups."

[No need to be rude. Just get your message across.]

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

We're really getting socked here with spam on this newsgroup, Steve - do you
know who's in charge of maintaining this thing? Looks like the sysad's out
to lunch... way, way out to lunch...

I'm more familiar with how things work on the Windows forums/newsgroups, though
not all that much so.

William's advice sounds good to me.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Bill,

Thanks for the added info.

[No need to be rude. Just get your message across.]

I don't believe I ever said anything in a rude manner
to Microsoft, nor were any of postings rude. I can well
understand how these things happen.

On the other hand, I can understand how people feel
when they visit a newsgroup or forum sincerely looking
for help, and what they get is a bunch of junk messages
that significantly detract from their experience.
Without fully-functional forums, what recourse do users
really have to get the help they need? I've really felt
benefitted by the PowerPoint newsgroup - it's helped
me a lot over the years. Now that I've got some years
of experience under my belt with the app, I feel great
satisfaction in contributing even a little when I can
to help others with questions. But when Microsoft doesn't
properly maintain or manage their forums, every single
benefit that ever existed is taken away, sadly enough.

Jeff

 

[Jeff Chapman]

William,

One more comment: I would hope that Microsoft would
maintain Usenet accessibility for the newsgroups.
It's really handy to be able to access the
newsgroups through Entourage as well as to store
relevant messages.

What seems to be more necessary for the forums
is a server-side spam filter that goes in place and
flags messages as spam BEFORE the messages are posted to
either the Mactopia site or to the Usenet newsgroups,
as well as a few appointed forum moderators with admin
privileges to clean up as necessary. Adobe, for instance has
Usenet newsgroups, but they seem to be handling and
moderating the spam well.

Jeff

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Bill,

Thanks for the added info.

[No need to be rude. Just get your message across.]

I don't believe I ever said anything in a rude manner
to Microsoft, nor were any of postings rude. I can well
understand how these things happen.

Sorry, Jeff, didn't mean to imply *you* were being rude. I just meant
that as a general comment. Microsoft gets a lot of needless crap and in
this situation a more direct statement would be better than giving a
piece of mind.

On the other hand, I can understand how people feel
when they visit a newsgroup or forum sincerely looking
for help, and what they get is a bunch of junk messages
that significantly detract from their experience.
Without fully-functional forums, what recourse do users
really have to get the help they need? I've really felt
benefitted by the PowerPoint newsgroup - it's helped
me a lot over the years. Now that I've got some years
of experience under my belt with the app, I feel great
satisfaction in contributing even a little when I can
to help others with questions. But when Microsoft doesn't
properly maintain or manage their forums, every single
benefit that ever existed is taken away, sadly enough.

Agreed.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

One more comment: I would hope that Microsoft would
maintain Usenet accessibility for the newsgroups.
It's really handy to be able to access the
newsgroups through Entourage as well as to store
relevant messages.

What seems to be more necessary for the forums
is a server-side spam filter that goes in place and
flags messages as spam BEFORE the messages are posted to
either the Mactopia site or to the Usenet newsgroups,
as well as a few appointed forum moderators with admin
privileges to clean up as necessary. Adobe, for instance has
Usenet newsgroups, but they seem to be handling and
moderating the spam well.

Right. Microsoft has maintained msnews.microsoft.com, which replicates
all the Microsoft newsgroups on Usenet and because they control this
server they can at least remove the spam when it appears. I appreciate
having this server to connect to.

However, Microsoft can't control the spam postings replicated on servers
other than their own. Google does a great job of filtering and I'm sure
other forum-NNTP sites must be doing the same thing. The thinking behind
the officeformac.com forums just boggles my mind.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

What seems to be more necessary for the forums

is a server-side spam filter that goes in place and
flags messages as spam BEFORE the messages are posted to
either the Mactopia site or to the Usenet newsgroups,
as well as a few appointed forum moderators with admin
privileges to clean up as necessary. Adobe, for instance has
Usenet newsgroups, but they seem to be handling and
moderating the spam well.

And IIRC, they use Web Crossing to serve the underlying NNTP newsgroup
to browser users, same as here.

IOW, it's not likely that it's a software/technical limitation.