[BioDarwin] Re: Spam via BioDarwin Digest, Vol 11, Issue 1?

[J.W. Bizzaro]

(Chris, thanks for what you wrote.  I think the list members should see it; 
hope you don't mind.)

List Members,

The BioDarwin list was created about 3 years ago as a favor to Apple Computer, 
which was/is interested in getting bioinformatic applications ported to the OS 
X (Darwin) platform.  Since then, the traffic has been very light: the list 
gets about 1 post per month, with the topic often being on cluster computing. 
Plus, messages about OS X and clustering with the Mac are more frequently 
posted to other lists (the Bioclusters list, e.g.).

Considering this, and the increased attention we'll have to pay to the other 
lists now that they're on full moderation, we'll take Chris's advice and close 
the BioDarwin list.

I recommend subscribing and addressing your questions to the following lists 
that Bioinformatics.Org has:

For general bioinformatics questions: BiO_Bulletin_Board (1,200+ subscribers)

   https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bio_bulletin_board

For cluster and HPC questions: Bioclusters (800+ subscribers)

   https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters

For bioinformatics programming questions: Biodevelopers (500+ subscribers)

   https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/biodevelopers

Cheers,
Jeff

Chris Dagdigian wrote:
> 
> I only help out with a few lists at bioinformatics.org, mostly with 
> bioclusters. I do, however, run the mailing lists over at open-bio.org.
> 
> The people running these lists work incredibly hard. You would not 
> believe the effort in time, volunteer and server resources required to 
> keep an open list free from spam and viral messages.  Going by the stats 
> I see on my open-bio.org server, for every spam that has leaked onto a 
> bioinformatics.org mailing list over the last week there have been at 
> least 7-12,000 messages that were intercepted and blocked.  Thousands 
> more make it through only to be caught up in the spam, MIME and virus 
> scans.  The mass of remaining messages that do get through hit the 
> mailing list filters.  Every once in a while a message evades everything 
> and gets on to the list.
> 
> The lists have previously been set to "list members post only" which was 
> a good spam defense. Over the past few days, some enterprising spammer 
> has been forging the FROM field on messages to masquerade as a legit 
> subscriber. What you are seeing (and complaining about) are the 2 that 
> managed to leak through the member test along with *every* other spam 
> check.  You have no idea the amount of work that people have put in to 
> keep that number so low.
> 
> Because of this spammer, it appears that the bioinformatics.org people 
> are going to switch to all-moderation, all-the-time which is going to 
> drop another huge time and effort burden on existing volunteers.  I 
> don't know how they are going to do it.
> 
> You should probably unsubscribe.
> 
> This list has been pretty dead and knowing how much more work Jeff and 
> the gang at bioinformatics.org have brought on themselves by going to 
> 100% moderation I'm going to recommend that this list be killed off to 
> preserve volunteer resources for more active forums.
> 
> -Chris
> 
> On Jun 18, 2006, at 6:43 PM, Brett Johnson wrote:
> 
>> > Today's Topics:
>> >
>> >    1. The cheapest medicine here! (Maureen)
>> >    2. N0w 40% cheaper, buy tabs and y0ur woman will be happy (Todd)
>>
>> That's it?  A BioDarwin Digest that consists solely of 2 spam messages.
>> Is this list moderated at all?  If not, I will unsubscribe.
>> I don't need spam flooding through my white-list channels...
>> This

-- 
J.W. Bizzaro
Bioinformatics Organization, Inc. (Bioinformatics.Org)
E-mail: jeff at bioinformatics.org
Phone:  +1 508 890 8600
--