Hi Helen,

>> Can't we switch the spam filter off and instead turn on the restricted
>> membership to the group? In other words, everybody that joins the group
>> is allowed to post everything here... The approval rates that we have
>> right now (5 approvals in February) are comparable with the approval
>> rates needed to join the group (about 10 new members per month).
>> Assuming that members don't post spam (right? :)), that should be ok.
>
> No, your reasoning is wrong Roman. You see only the ones that are
> approved. You never see the ones that we delete (3 or 4 a day on
> weekdays, up to 30 on weekend days). I don't know how Yahoo filters
> spam, but we get some really horrid ones sometimes.

Probably I should have to explain it better. When one turns a
"restricted membership" on, new member can join the group only if
moderator approves it. In this case we can require a short
human-readable message stating why one would like to join the group.
Spammers won't bother doing this, normal humans will provide some text.
And if group member sends the spam, we can easily block this person. I
use this scheme in few other groups that I moderate, and I did not have
any single spam email since their creation.

> We have enough coverage not to have delays of more than a couple of
> hours. However, there are times when Yahoo itself is delayed.

Sorry, I have seen only two moderators in the members list, you and Dan.
Probably I have missed somebody.

> We do have one in the UK too, but he doesn't seem to bother modding
> this list. I'll put you in as moderator for GMT +1; and we could do
> with one further east of you, around GMT +5.

Ok.

Roman