At 10:13 AM 12/15/94 +0000, Stephen Clark wrote:
|We are all, presumably, reasonably experienced listusers.
|So why are so many of us forwarding details about actuary's demise
|without pausing to wonder whether someone has already done this?
|The fallout from one spammer has already occupied us long enough.
|Yes, we all know that he's been removed. Yes, we all know he was going to
|be. SUre, we should react to spamming, to discourage others. But don't
|go on about it.
|Stephen Clark
|Liverpool
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One has to realize that there are delays on the net. In my own case, as
soon as I got the "account revoked" message from netcom, I had to make a
decision as to whether to pass that along or not. On one hand, if it was
posted and prevented further responses back to the spammer/netcom from
those represented here, it would cut down on net traffic. On the other
hand, as you point out, there is the danger of getting multiple copies of
the same thing posted to the list.  In my own case, I had not seen a
response from netcom posted yet to the list when I received mine, thus I
felt it was probably worthwhile to post it out. However, due to net delays
there will probably be some period of time where the netcom (or whomever)
response is enroute and someone else will be pursuing the same line of
thought. Thus the two messages "cross in the mail". There is basically no
solution to this unless there is an agreement not to ever pass along this
kind of information. You will always have the problem of latency period.
However, once the first posting is received by any given person, then that
should be a signal not to re-post the same thing again.
 
 
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Bob Wier, CS Dept., East Texas State University
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