spam (was Fluorescent spectral info)

[Jon Monroe]

Ken asked:

>There is a lot of spam in this group, oddly enough, other groups of semi
>related  discussions are nearly spam free, why?

"Private" listservs (e.g. biolab, 
http://biowww.clemson.edu/biolab/home.html) are not open to 
non-subscribers so spam is not a problem.  Newsgroups such as 
Plant-ed are open to all so we get spammed.  As a BIOSCI newsgroup we 
benefit from automatic searchable archiving not possible with 
listservs (see: http://www.bio.net/hypermail/PLANT-EDUCATION/). 
Moderated newsgroups screen out the spam at the expense of 
spontaneity of conversation - a feature of Plant-ed valued by its 
users in the past, hence we are currently not moderated.  If you look 
at the archives of other BIOSCI newsgroups 
(http://www.bio.net/archives.html) that are not moderated they get 
the same spam that we see.  For example, see this month's archive on 
AGEING (http://www.bio.net/hypermail/AGEING/9911/).  Hopefully, 
electronic filtering will solve the problem.  If not, I am willing to 
serve as moderator.

Jon

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  Jonathan D. Monroe           Associate Professor
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