Advertising

Blatant spam gets the spammer reported to its ISP (by me, at least).

There is a FAQ Penney used to post periodically with the netiquette for alt.sewing, but I haven't seen her here for awhile. The spam to newsgroups is getting progressively worse over time, google-groups and gmail are responsible for most of it, but they do absolutely *nothing* about it.

Beverly

This is an unmoderated Usenet newsgroup, and there is no real way of prohibiting anything.

Usenet is also not an advertising medium. Google "Advertising on Usenet" and you'll see very similar documents. Here is just one.

it is true you can't prevent someone from posting what theyshouldn't, good newsgroups are often self-moderating - members canreport violators and also respond negatively to advertisers. Report Usenet violations through your ISP. For example: "Usenet Complaints...."If you are reporting an incident that you believe to be off-topicto the Usenet group, please include the section of the group'sCharter, showing that the post is off-topic."

If you are reading the groups via Google you can also report abuse through Google Groups:

PS: here's a copy of the FAQ Penny used to send out:

It's a definite no-no. There have been two or three spam posts in recent days, most importantly you'll notice no one responds unless it's to politely, or sometimes not so politely, tell them to go forth and multiply!

You'll also need to consign a few trolls to the kill file - you'll very quickly learn who! :-(

But.....

There is a very active membership in this NG, so you'll find plenty of stuff to interest you.

Very true -- HOWEVER, the original question was, "do we discourage ads?" and the correct answer to that question is that there is no effective way to do that.

You can't stop ads at source but you can block any poster who offends you.

I do that with advertisers.

Mary

True but the comment I was referring to was, "This is an unmoderated Usenet newsgroup, and there is no real way of prohibiting anything."

Encouraging offenders to read the rules of netettique, reporting spammers and replying to ads (while at the same time removing the links included in them) requesting the poster understand Usenet, is actually, very effective. It's why this and some other groups are not innundated with ads.

Pat in Arkansas wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@s37g2000prg.googlegr oups.com:

it's Google destroying Usenet. use your killfile to cut all crossposts & 98% of the crap from gmail/google disappears.

lee

Yes, and that means the trolls and wreckers make occasional forays into the group. Filtering or the killfile takes care of them.

The ethos amongst the regular posters to this group is that advertising is positively discouraged. Commercial spammers are unlikely to check if there's any response to their posts, but we do get the occasional poster popping up to ask if it's OK to advertise - the answer's no.

I just mark obvious ads as read without even reading them and do same for certain other posters of absolute tripe - you recognise their posting style pretty fast, even if they change names to avoid killfiling.

Then I read all the good stuff, and there is lots of it on here.

Lizzy

Not to mention making it known that we do not do business with spammers, no matter how much better their product might be, or how good their prices. It's a principle.

It's a pledge:

am scrupulous about that.

Very true, and I have emailed people bunches of times with the Advertising on Usenet FAQ and the link to the Boulder Pledge entry in Wikipedia.

Since a spammer must be either dishonest or clueless, the Boulder Pledge is really easy to keep.

Joy Beeson