Would it be possible to have

[BigWallop]

A real D.I.Y group again?

Out of all the postings I have just downloaded, only around 100 of 545 posts are about real DIY subjects. The rest of the shi***** is about mail order brides, buying fake watches and political garbage about the Big Nutjobs Party.

Does anyone in here have a question or need help with a true DIY project? If so, let yourself be known to us who want to help.

The rest of you blowhards need to start your own group about illegal advertising and promotion of political hatred and sexual deviance to minors.

THIS IS A dO iT yOURSE3LF HELP GROUP.

[John Rumm]

Where are you getting your news feed?

I get a S/N of about 98% at the moment I guess. I might need to kill two or three threads a day - all that seems to get through are one or two fake watche type ads, and the occasional British nazi rant.

[BigWallop]

I reset the groups to get them more up to date after my longish absence, and a lot of posts from advertisers and the BNP pushers were all over the place.

My quick fix, is to block all senders (from addresses) that have YAHOO, Google or GMail in them. That actually gets rid of 98% of the little buggers, would you believe. :-)

[John Rumm]

Seems like Virginmedia don't do much filtering then!

And about 10% of the useful stuff as well I expect.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Must be lack of filtering on whoever supplies the newsfeed to your ISP. Very little spam here on this group - others are worse.

[mick]

I don't think the figure is that high! I've been filtering everything from googlegroups for ages and, AFAICT, I've not missed much of any importance. Maybe just the occasional poster.

To the OP: Of course, forgetting OE and using any proper newsreader also helps. OE simply can't do it properly. It doesn't have proper filtering facilities.

[Ian White]

Welcome back. The only problem is that you let your guard drop, while the regulars have kept their filters up and don't see any problem at all.

I don't find it necessary to block any messages by ISP, only by header and other properties such as excessive length and cross-posting.

The only recurring problem is caused by a few regulars in this group who get involved in some heavily cross-posted off-topic dogfight... and then trim their replies to uk.d-i-y alone. Please don't!

[John Rumm]

BW is filtering GMail and yahoo email addresses as well GG by the sounds of it. That's a fair chunk of users.

[TheOldFellow]

As you will realise from my email address, I don't think you have this quite right. I use gmail to preserve my other email addresses from spam harvesting. The main problem IMO is those who use 'groups' web interfaces to the usenet.

R.

[Dave Liquorice]

Haven't seen *any* of those. The only "noise" in when some of the regulars have a bit of bun fight. You know who your are...

Get your news from a decent server that filters the crap. I'm with news.individual.net, you have to pay but EUR10/year is a small price for a spam free newsfeed. eternal-september.org is free and I know that people use that without complaining about spam, so maybe their filtering is as effective as NINs?

[BigWallop]

The domain name filtering seems to work really well. In fact, I don't think I'm missing any of the real posts to the group at all. It seems to be the free domain names that the spammers use and throw away that are carrying all the rubbish.

If I do miss one or two original postings, then I can always pick them up in the replies. :-)

[mick]

oops... sorry - missed that! I've had a couple of things to stick in my killfile, but not much.

[mick]

Strictly speaking, you don't need a valid "From:" header when posting to newsgroups (see my headers for an example). An invalid address prevents email harvesting from newsgroups and reduces your spam level. That must be good. :-) Using "@invalid.invalid" automatically makes the address invalid so no-one gets your spam. Don't use "@invalid" as that is actually a valid email address!

An invalid email address will, of course, mess up anyone wanting to email you directly!

[Pete Verdon]

I've recently switched to eternal september - trialling it for a bit before I close my paid Gradwell account. Seems fine, and I certainly don't see as much spam as the OP apparently does.

Pete

[The Medway Handyman]

IMO the whole thing would be much better as a Yahoo Group. I run several, no spam, moderation, no flame wars, no missing posts to speak of, much better all round.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yehbut imagine dribble as a moderator...

[Clive George]

Can you imagine a mailing list (aka yahoo group) for a group of the same volume as uk.d-i-y?

Anyway usenet is great - better than either mailing lists or web forums in so many ways.

FWIW I've seen none of the mail order brides or watches spam. I suspect that's getting cancelled, and my news provider is honouring those cancels.

[John Rumm]

This one does the rounds every year or so...

As a general rule I personally don't like web based fora. Slow, inflexible etc.

I don't think this group would be half as interesting if it were moderated. A huge amount of interesting stuff comes up in threads that have drifted off topic, or start out as ding dongs between a couple of posters with entrenched view points.

For example, most moderators would soon tire of:

yet there is loads of good information being presented there - even if only to swat ever more daft suggestions from one of the contributors. (I will leave you to work out which)

[John Rumm]

Yup, same here. I get the BNP dickheads and the occasional other ad, but not much in volume at all.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Seem to be getting lots of ads for watches today...;-)