The problem is twofold:
 
1. Many large sites haven't installed 1.8b yet and thus do not contribute
   to the spam detection. It is  typical for large LISTSERV sites to test
   things more carefully because the impact in case of screwup is bigger,
   so we'll just have to wait on that one.
 
2. The core is overloaded and  this prevents alerts from being propagated
   at a  decent speed.  One of  the core site  spends 5  1/2 hours  a day
   offline on the average! Luckily, the detection is done in parallel, so
   in principle each region should be able to detect the spam on its own.
   However there may  be regions where there aren't  enough non-core 1.8b
   servers (or enough targeted lists on such servers) to detect the spam.
   For instance  in Europe we didn't  catch the Ukraine spam  because for
   some reason it was only sent to the LINKFAIL/NODMGT-L et al lists that
   are peered at DEARN (1.8a), and then  to GUMNCC. It wasn't sent to any
   list at  SEARN, HEARN, and  so on, so  there weren't enough  events in
   Europe to call it a spam. From LISTSERV's perspective it could just as
   well have been minutes posted to 3-4 Terena lists :-)
 
Once the core  migrates to 1.8b and something is  done about the INTERBIT
disaster, things should work a lot better.
 
  Eric