Re: spam and news

[Virtual Bob <h93young@creighton.edu>]

>I'm not sure it would cut down on bandwidth.   It would be easier to post 
>to the group, so all sorts of spam would get through and all sorts of 
>flame baiting and generally useless posts (like the "Porsche Rules" post 
>last week - bah humbug!) would become more common.   Of the newsgroups I 
>monitor, I read maybe one out of every 100 posts.   My "read ratio" on 
>the Quattro list is much higher than that.   I fear it would drop to that 
>level if it were a newsgroup.

Technically it will save total bandwidth, since you initially get all the
headers and only download those which interest you. The mailing list, on
the other hand, would have to send out x copies of same stuff. If the
day's worth is 150KB and assuming we have 2000 readers, then !! 300MB !!
had to be sent each day at Dan's site. If Dan's using a 33.6Kb modem, he'd
probably have to dedicate the link to q-list because it probably will take
whole day to send all those copies out.

Another unexpected (or planned, by Dan) bonus is that most spammers do not
seek specific newsserver at specific site. This would probably cut down
spams to nil.

On the annoying side, depending upon your choice of newsreader you'd
probably have to wait for a while to either read/post/reply a message.

And for those people who don't usually do usenet (like me), this news
thing would have make less motivation to check the current posts. For me,
I kinda like the list format because I have to check (and erase) the posts
to keep my mailbox under quota. If the q-list goes usenet, then I probably
would check a lot less, too. But some people do like the usenet format...

Which brings me to another question... Dan, how long would a message be
kept before it goes to the trash bin if, say, that you do setup a q-list
news group?

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