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  • Re: end of comp.lang.apl?

    From EllisMorgan@21:1/5 to Curtis Jones on Sat Dec 9 12:07:43 2023
    On 07/12/2023 18:02, Curtis Jones wrote:
    On Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at 10:48:32 AM UTC-8, Stefano Lanzavecchia wrote:
    On Tuesday 5 December 2023 at 15:52:16 UTC+1, mkr wrote:
    it looks like the group has been overtaken by massive quantities of spam. does anyone know of a way to work around it?

    Mike
    As far as I can tell, it's not just this newsgroup: other newsgroups I read regularly suffer from the same recrudescence of spam. I hope it's just a transitory phase and somebody will close the loophole that let the spammers in.
    In the meantime, I report them on google.groups which mirrors the usenet groups.
    --
    Stefano
    Stefanon, It's pretty awful. Please note the circled "i" in the upper right to "Report abuse". I've been using it, and it might help if the rest of us did, too. Curtis

    Hello Stef,
    I access this newsgroup via eternal september (ES). The is much
    discussion in the group "eternal-september.support" (ESS) about the high
    level of span and how to cope with it. Ray, who setup and runs ES, is
    very diligent in filtering out spam. Much of the discussion is about
    avoiding false positives and false negatives so that the filter will
    show you all the valid messages and none of the spam. Indeed there was a
    post by Ray this morning in ESS saying (I paraphrase) "I was was
    expecting this after X published his filter rules".
    Most of the spam Ray filters out seems to come from Google Groups (GG).
    I certainly find comp.lang.apl (CLA) very usable with a low ratio of
    spam to good stuff. CLA is a bit inactive these days but well worth
    lurking in. I suppose the choice is between learning to run a filter for yourself or to hide behind an energetically run usenet service provider
    who does it for you.
    best wishes, Ellis

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  • From Martin Neitzel@21:1/5 to news@ellismorgan.co.uk on Fri Dec 15 16:51:27 2023
    EllisMorgan <news@ellismorgan.co.uk> wrote:
    Most of the spam Ray filters out seems to come from Google Groups (GG).

    That is true. On the news server I maintain, 95% of all all articles
    (across all news groups) are currently that spam originating from
    Google Groups. This has been going now for about four or six weeks.
    (Well, you know yourself :-/ )

    This has been a bad year for news server operators. In summer, someone
    started spamming many newsgroups with large illicet binary postings, occasionally also switching user accounts. These were quite easy filter
    away, both based on their size (200+KB per article) und some consistent
    header lines.

    The GG spam is much more difficult to weed out. The articles are small,
    and the "From:" address very variable. If I'd filter on "*@gmail.com",
    that would do away with both Mike's and Stefano's article, too. Not
    good.

    However, it looks like this problem will go away in 2 months.
    Today, Google released this:

    https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538

    The top and bottom parts of this announcment:

    Google Groups ending support for Usenet

    If you work with Usenet groups in Google Groups, support for these
    groups is ending soon.

    What's changing?
    Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google
    Groups (at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups,
    subscribe to Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content.

    [...]

    Why is Google Groups support for Usenet ending?

    Over the last several years, legitimate activity in text-based
    Usenet groups has declined significantly because users have moved
    to more modern technologies and formats such as social media
    and web-based forums. Much of the content being disseminated
    via Usenet today is binary (non-text) file sharing, which Google
    Groups does not support, as well as spam.

    One might continue last sentence as "as well as spam, which originates
    from our users and which we are unable/unwilling to stop."

    For the well-being of my server (with currently 95% GG spam), I will
    pull the google plug right now, "two months early". Not based on
    the From: address but on the "...@googlegroups.com" article ID;
    i.e. you can conintue to use your @gmail.com address if you find
    another news provider. I can give you a home if all you need
    are "the big 8" and de.all, and oh: all the various J mailing lists
    gatewayted into local newsgroups.

    Martin Neitzel

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