Anti-spam policy for sdnet.* newsgroups, San Diego

wkronert at sunstroke.1sdsu.edu

From:	wkronert at sunstroke.1sdsu.edu
Subject:	*Anti-spam policy for sdnet. newsgroups, San Diego**
Date:	15 Dec 2004 09:02:08 GMT

Archive-name: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~wk/sdnet/index.html
Posting-Frequency: [This is an automatic posting for sdnet.config.
Posting Frequency will be on the 1st and 15th of each month.]

The general guide line is that, sdnet.* is a regional usenet hierarchy to
San Diego Calif., USA. This implies and means that it is meant for people
living in San Diego. The sdnet.* is a retromoderated hierarchy. Guest
from other areas are welcome to read and post to sdnet.*. However, the
following general guide should be followed:

1) Read the group for a week or two before posting to it. If there is
FAQ's for a given sdnet newsgroup, read them and follow them. You can find
the FAQ's for a given group in the sdnet newsgroup list

Articles subjected to cancellation:

+ Any spam that meets the BI Threshold. You may want to look at: Tim
Skirvin's Spam FAQ Page for a more complete over view of BI Thresholds.
This is the current spam policy for all of usenet,
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/spam.html

+ Make Money Fast (MMF) articles. This also is the current policy
for all of usenet.

+ Binary/image files in non-binary sdnet.* groups. This again is
also with in the current spam policy for all of usenet.

+ MIME/HTML posts, and in particular any posting using a content-
encoding other than 7bit, 8bit, or quoted-printable. Most users reading
Usenet do not use a Web browser, and HTML is difficult or impossible to
read to interpret the content. Some posters who post HTML also include a
plain-text version of the message. This is redundant and wasteful. HTML
also consumes much more bandwidth.

+ General Guide Lines Involving: Ongoing Flame Wars From Other
Hierarchies:
a) Any and all flames involving the long ongoing flame war in
alt.astrology. There is is no exceptions nor is anyone omitted from this
policy. This includes the initial article that caused the flame war and
any follow ups to the flame war. There are no exceptions.
b) Any and all articles cross posted to: alt.usenet.kooks, alt.astrology
(as well as any other astrology newsgroup).
c) Promoting your business. Sdnet.* hierarchy is not for promoting
business.
d) Sdnet.general is for discussions about and for San Diego and intended
for San Diego users. It is not intended to carry out personal attacks on
others, provoke flame wars or continue flame wars.
e) The sdnet.* hierarchy is not intended to serve as a extension (carry
over) for flame wars started in other hierarchies, no exceptions.

+ Excessive cross-posting, if you have a article that is
cross-posted to 10 or more newsgroups it is very possible that your
article will be cancelled. There are even lower limits set to this in
specific sdnet.* groups (check the FAQ's). Most other regional hiearchies
impose a 5 newsgroup limit on their hierarchy. Global newsgroups for the
most part tend to reach up to 20 newsgroups. Some of this is moot in that,
if you try and cross post a article using Deja News they have a 12
newsgroup limit. If you are using Airnews as your source of news, they
impose a 5 newsgroup limit. Many providers filter out excessive
cross-posting and each provider sets there own rule. My best suggestion is
to stay under 10 newsgroups for any cross-posting.

+ Article should have something to do with San Diego in general.
That means if you are posting a job offered article and the job is located
outside San Diego such as New York this has no bearing to our local
region. In addition trying to sell a car when you are located in Alaska
has no bearing to our local groups. Please keep in mind these are *local*
groups to San Diego.

+Things a user can do when they see spam in the newsgroups. As
users are encouraged to object to spam:

+Do not follow up on spam. It usually is bad to follow up on spam,
spammers do not read the groups they spam to and all it does is promote
flame wars in general. However, if you do post a follow up to the spam
please try and do the following:

Edit out the main body of the spam as much as possible. There no good
reason to include even more of the spam/ads, you are just promoting more
of it. If the spam is posted to more then one group, remove all other
newsgroups on the line except for the one you are reading it off of.

+You are encouraged to mail the spammer and perhaps the postmaster
of the abusing site (postmaster@whatever.domain) using a polite message.
You can either mail a FAQ (that explains the character of the newsgroup
they spammed) to the person who spammed the message and/or you can use a
polite letter explaining the offense. A example letter would be some one
posting a off-topic, out of area ad to sdnet.jobs.offered:

"Your article was found in a _regional_ usenet newsgroup. This _regional_
newsgroup, 'sdnet' stands for San Diego, California, USA. It is meant for
the people in San Diego for jobs IN San Diego. Your article was found not
to even come close to the region of San Diego, Calif. Please locate the
correct regional newsgroup for your article."

You can see how this letter could easily be changed to fit any of the
other sdnet newsgroups.

The below comes from just one of many ISP's and their terms for service:

"that the regional groups *only* permit postings related to their specific
region, and that unless a group, by charter, *specifically* permits
commercial postings, then such postings are not allowed."

+In general, most of usenet is discussion not ads. Groups such as
the jobs, forsale, etc are clearly ad based newsgroups with specific
purposes. For the most part, the rest of sdnet is mostly for discussion
purposes and ads are general not welcome (please check the newsgroups
before advertizing in them).

+Regional Hierarchies - They have a very specific purpose with a
specific audience. In the case of sdnet.*, this regional hierarchy is open
to the local people of San Diego, Calif., USA. Unlike the alt.* hierarchy
and the big eight hierarchy, regional hierarchies set their own polices.

In general, if a person(s) *continues* to knowingly, intentionally abuse
this hierarchy (sdnet.*) by: harassment, stalking, flooding a
newsgroup(s), impersonate or forge another users name for the purpose of
harassment in the sdnet.* hierarchy or create a situation in the
sdnet.* hierarchy such that the newsgroup(s) are no longer useable and the
local regulars no longer feel comfortable in using the regional
newsgroup(s) this will result in action taken against the abuser(s). Such
actions could be and not limited to; being banned from the hierarchy (your
articles will be cancelled when posted to the sdnet.* hierarchy), and
reports sent to the ISP's involved.

This above policies permit the sdnet.* Usenet News Administrators to
cancel any article posted in the sdnet.* hierarchy that do not adhere to
the above policies.

--
Bill Kronert San Diego Usenet Admin. - SDNET
wkronert@sunstroke.1sdsu.edu - remove "1" from e-mail address