At 04:47 PM 23/01/2003 -0600, you wrote:

> > At 05:47 PM 23/01/2003 +0000, Lester Caine wrote:
> > >How come they have not been barred?
> > >
> > >Twice in two weeks!
> >
> > Since you asked, the reason these characters can't be banned is that they
> > subscribe each time with a different email address, do their mischief, and
> > then unsubscribe. We can only moderate against an email address...
> >
>
>Could you restrict uploading to those with a valid email who have been
>subscribers for at least X amount of time? Or is a Yahoo controlled thingy?

Unless we control who can subscribe and then set individually whether the
specific subscriber can post, upload files, etc., no. That is,
interception is either all or none.

We are NOT going to restrict membership. It defeats the purpose of having
an all-comers list and further complicates things for people who use the
news mirror. It's already too complicated for some process-challenged
individuals.

Not to mention that I already spend an average of 12 hours a week of unpaid
time coordinating all these lists and doing the small amount of ^moderation
that I already do.

The REASON this list is so responsive is that it *is* unmoderated. Unless
we had moderators on-line 24/7, you would wait hours or even days to see
your postings appear, with the same level of drag-out on responses. In a
support list, a lot of people can't wait that long.

I really don't think we have an unbearable level of spam on this list,
provided you are prepared to engage in a little self-help. I do think we
have an unbearable level of griping about it. It really irks me a lot that
people complain to the list about things like the news mirror being down or
the shortcomings of free public list forums. It is "noise" that we can do
without on a forum whose purpose is to help people troubleshoot their
Firebird and InterBase problems. Some spam you can avoid, if you take the
time and effort to go and read the instructions and set up your own Yahoo
preferences. I can't do that for you.

^heLen