In a message dated Tue, 10 Mar 98 08:40:20 -0500, edward@paleo.org
(Edward Reid) wrote:
> 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.
As of a year ago, the last time I compiled statistics, fully 11.4% of
all postings (FAQs and other periodic informational postings) approved
for news.answers were legitimately crossposted to 7 or more
newsgroups. Some are posted to as many as 26 newsgroups at once, and
are on-topic in all of them.
> 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.
The case of the letters in the approval address may vary, and it may
also contain other addresses, if the article is posted to additional
moderated groups, but otherwise it should be constant. Some approved
articles are posted to only two newsgroups, but those shouldn't be
triggering spam filters in any case. All *.answers newsgroups should
be at the very end of the Newsgroups: header, though in some cases FAQ
maintainers are a little lax and don't put *.answers at the very end.
Also, every valid news.answers article article has a Followup-To:
header, as well as a line which begins with "Archive-name:" somewhere
before the first blank line in the body of the article. These simple,
mechanical constraints could be forged, but it seems rather unlikely
to me that a spammer would bother, particularly once the Archive-name:
auxiliary header is considered.
The *.answers moderation team would be happy to help in any way we can
to keep approved FAQs available to the readers who need them.
- Pam Greene
one of the *.answers moderation team, news-answers-request@mit.edu