Update from the NANOG Communications Committee regarding recent off-topic posts

valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu
Mon Jul 30 17:35:35 UTC 2012


On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:04:36 +0200, Panashe Flack said:
> list for continued activity. And just for reference - have you guys
> SEEN the "Linux Kernel Mailing List"? - it gets frequent spam posts
> and yet is perfectly able to ignore the spam/irrelevant posts and
> continue on its remit.

For those who don't drink from the Linux-Kernel firehose, it averages
1 or 2 spams per day - and anywhere from 500 to 700 postings a day.

As Linus Torvalds said, back when it was averaging 200 a day:

"Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel.   In fact, nobody who
 expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will
 read even half.  Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about
 a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea.  None of the
 individual gnomes read all the postings either,  they just work together
 really well."

The list managers do an incredible job of stopping spam - but even if
50 or 75 a day got through, they'd just be lost in the noise.   You're skipping
several hundred messages a day, skipping a few more isn't any different.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 865 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20120730/77c0bd73/attachment.sig>


More information about the NANOG mailing list