This spam is getting out of hand. There's almost more spam threads than legitimate ones. Is there any way to remove them and block the authors? One of them (called "sexy") posted 12 spams this month alone so blocking should help.
I don't know if Google does anything, but maybe if enough of us report the spam to Google they will do something. To do that just click the message, and click the "More Options" near the datetime on the top right. Then click Report this Message.
Regards,
Ryan
This is a sign of Rails' popularity, no?
I have been reporting them as spam with no apparent effect. I am not sure if a reported spam to a group is still filtered by google? Anyone know how this works with google groups + gmail?
As for blocking them from the same sender, that is probably futile as long as new list members are not approved.
I think the only real solution would be for someone to take up the list administrator role, turn on new member approvals, and then start killing spammers.
Rails core, how many new members does this list get per day? How onerous would it be to monitor new members? If it is just a few, then it should not be too hard to make all of rails-core group admins, as well as a couple more volunteers (I'll volunteer if core is on as well), and turn on email notification to admins for new member requests. This should get new people approved pretty expiditiously, and stop the spammers in their tracks (well, after one spam, at least)
-- Chad
Google groups allow for moderation for new members only. So we could still let anyone sign up to get emails, but their first email to the group would have to pass moderation. This seems like a low-cost, high-value approach to reducing spam postings, and isn't as much effort or as problematic as full-scale moderation or approving every new member who just wants to get the emails.
Google groups allow for moderation for new members only. So we could still let anyone sign up to get emails, but their first email to the group would have to pass moderation. This seems like a low-cost, high- value approach to reducing spam postings, and isn't as much effort or as problematic as full-scale moderation or approving every new member who just wants to get the emails.
Sounds good to me. I believe david's the only list owner right now, but I'll see if I can get added to that list and see what's involved.
The gmail spam filter has been pretty good for me, stopping most of the core list emails. I didn't realise how bad it was till I just checked the archive... Seems strange that the same company's filters aren't as effective on a seperate product...
In the meantime flag a few of them as spam and see if it helps ...
Google groups allow for moderation for new members only. So we could still let anyone sign up to get emails, but their first email to the group would have to pass moderation. This seems like a low-cost,
high- value approach to reducing spam postings, and isn't as much effort or as problematic as full-scale moderation or approving every new member who just wants to get the emails.Sounds good to me. I believe david's the only list owner right now, but I'll see if I can get added to that list and see what's involved.
Doing that on rubyonrails-talk has done wonders - there's basically no
spam on the group anymore (except when I fat-finger things in the
control panel).
Fred
Ah, Gmail's spam-filtering is user specific. I just started marking them as spam a month or so ago, I guess mine isn't trained well enough yet. Wild...
+1
I’ve marked “sexy” in my Google as spam and so far it has been doing a good job of putting them as spam. Guess it is working for me 
That’s pretty sexy …
Those of us that get the daily summary via an abridged email cannot benefit from training a personal spam filter.
+1 for moderation of emails sent by new members.
This spam is getting out of hand. There's almost more spam threads than legitimate ones. Is there any way to remove them and block the authors? One of them (called "sexy") posted 12 spams this month alone so blocking should help.
I don't know if Google does anything, but maybe if enough of us report the spam to Google they will do something. To do that just click the message, and click the "More Options" near the datetime on the top right. Then click Report this Message.
This is a sign of Rails' popularity, no?
Or a sign of rampant spam bots. A lot of the spam is cross posted to dozens of groups.
I have been reporting them as spam with no apparent effect. I am not sure if a reported spam to a group is still filtered by google? Anyone know how this works with google groups + gmail?
google does eventually kill spam accounts but it seems to take a long time. by the time they've done anything hundreds of messages have been generated and a new bogus account created.
As for blocking them from the same sender, that is probably futile as long as new list members are not approved.
I think the only real solution would be for someone to take up the list administrator role, turn on new member approvals, and then start killing spammers.
Rails core, how many new members does this list get per day? How onerous would it be to monitor new members? If it is just a few, then it should not be too hard to make all of rails-core group admins, as well as a couple more volunteers (I'll volunteer if core is on as well), and turn on email notification to admins for new member requests. This should get new people approved pretty expiditiously, and stop the spammers in their tracks (well, after one spam, at least)
I've been doing that single-handedly for rails-talk which gets significantly more traffic so a few people doing the same for rails-core should be fairly minimal effort. As others have said you can allow people to join with no approval and only require admin intervention the first time they post. As far as I can tell you only ever need to look at the first post a member makes. The world seems to split nicely into spammers and non-spammers.
Fred
I've been doing that single-handedly for rails-talk which gets significantly more traffic so a few people doing the same for rails- core should be fairly minimal effort. As others have said you can allow people to join with no approval and only require admin intervention the first time they post. As far as I can tell you only ever need to look at the first post a member makes. The world seems to split nicely into spammers and non- spammers.
OK. I've now switched the settings to require moderation for first posts. I've also banned any users who have been spamming recently. Hopefully this improves and I don't get too swamped with moderation requests.
cool.
I do the digest thing as well, and it was > 50% spam before now.
Today it looks like pure quality content.
I'd like to offer my help to moderate if needed. I'm not a major contributor, but would do this if folks needed the help.
Mike B.