MathGroup Archive 2004

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Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg51986] Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings
  • From: dont at agora.rdrop.com (Don Taylor)
  • Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 02:08:04 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <cmfd5u$7ta$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

"Steven M. Christensen" <steve at smc.vnet.net> writes:
>First, here are the steps I take each day to moderate this group.
>Figuring out where in these steps to put in categorization would need
>to fit into this.   

>1.  I get perhaps 2500-3000 emails a day, every day.  Of these, perhaps
>    500 are not spam.  Because the Mathgroup addresses are easily found
>    by spammers, there is no way around getting a lot of spam.
>    Further, because MathGroup users often, unfortunately, 
>    send html email or other attachments, maybe 10-20 of their mails get
>    filtered by my, fairly sophisticated but not perfect, spam filters into
>    my spam folder.

>2.  Of the 500 good emails that get past my spam filters, I then have to
>    filter out those mails that are for Mathgroup.   Then, I have to
>    go through the spam folder to find any MathGroup posts that might be
>    there.  So,there are usually about 70 emails relevant to MathGroup.
>    Some, maybe 10 do not follow the rules - flames, licensing questions,
>    discussions of other systems, really trivial items, totally non-Mathematica
>    related.  In the end, there are 30-60 emails to read in more detail.

>This process takes from 1-3 hours typically, depending on the 
>number of emails, their complexity, etc.

A possible suggestion to reduce the load on Steve:

The comp.risks archive faces a similar load every day.
They have developed a simple little technique to cut the work.

At the bottom of each digest there are a couple of lines that say
"If you want to get your message to us include the word xxxx at
the beginning of the Subject line.  Note that you should keep
watching these lines because xxxx is going to change on an
irregular basis."  (And I've intentionally changed this to xxxx)

This could potentially cut the spam load, make it easier for the
filters, reduce the error rate, use a word that would be specifically
for Mathgroup, and give him several free hours a day to do more
valuable things.


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