There's been discussion recently on the faq-maintainers
mailing list about some news.answers approved FAQs being
missing on many sites. So far, some of the sites from which
they are missing are saying that Spam Hippo is the reason.
No one has been able to verify this. At least some of the
sysadmins blaming Spam Hippo do not appear to be familiar
with its methods or even to understand Usenet very well.
I checked your web site to try to determine whether Spam
Hippo's criteria would affect any news.answers postings.
Although the Support page says the criteria are on the
About page, I could find no criteria there or elsewhere on
the site.
The postings affected appear to be those crossposted to many
newsgroups (quite a few go to 7 newsgroups, and some to as
many as 13) and to have many parts posted at the same time.
All these have been reviewed and approved by the
news.answers moderators.
If Spam Hippo is not affecting news.answers, please share
Spam Hippo's criteria with us so that we can deflect this
red herring and resume looking for the real reason the
postings are not reaching some sites.
If Spam Hippo is indeed affecting news.answers, then I urge
you to extend it to avoid such action. Most (probably all)
FAQ maintainers agree totally that spam is a serious
problem for Usenet and that fighting spam is a Good Thing.
However, deleting valid news.answers postings is surely
counterproductive in fighting spam, since these are among
the most valuable postings on Usenet and deleting them
therefore reduces the value of Usenet to legitimate users.
It's probably simple to distinguish valid news.answers
postings from spam. Valid FAQs will always have "Approved:
news-answers-request@MIT.Edu". (This may vary slightly at
present but can be made to conform.) They will be posted to
at least three newsgroups, the *last* of which is always
news.answers, and the next to last of which is another
*.answers newsgroup. While spammers could forge these
attributes, I doubt they are doing so -- and if they do,
the news.answers moderators will notice.
I am sending a copy of this letter to the faq-maintainers
mailing list. I'll plan to send your response there also
unless you request that I refrain.
Although I've mentioned other FAQ maintainers, I am speaking
only for myself here, not for any group nor for any other
individual.
Edward Reid (author/maintainer of the misc.health.diabetes FAQ)