Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 14:05:41 -0500
From: Chuck Munson <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: Re: Radical spam on the increase


"Shawn P. Wilbur" wrote:
> 
> As some of you know, i'm one of the folks in the Spoon Collective, which
> hosts the anarchy-list and aut-opsy (and a bunch of others). I'm doing my
> turn at admin this week, and have noticed that the number of cross-posted
> messages (which frequently have to be individually forwarded, since their
> enormous headers make them look either like commercial spam or looping
> mail) has increased several-fold. This afternoon, in the short time it
> took to pass along 20 or so messages to two lists, another ten or so had
> accumulated in the spam folder. I'm already having to send messages out in
> batches, to avoid slowing down other list mail (and the server, and the
> mail gateway - mailing list bandwidth can be high, folks.) And then, of
> course, all the stuff i forwarded ends up in my personal mailbox, since
> i'm a subscriber, along with the dozens of messages sent by Agent Smiley
> to ever -AT--related group on yahoogroups, etc.
> 
> I know folks are eager to pass along every bit of post-9/11 info they can
> find - and also that the current events have re-energized every conspiracy
> theorist on the planet. But this is starting to look like the movement and
> its fellow travellers, launching a denial of service attack on itself.
> 
> Are the present news and info servers not doing the job? It would be a
> trivial matter to create an open news-and-alerts forum where all this
> stuff that is now cross-posted could go, taking a load off the servers and
> much duplication out of our mailboxes. Sort of like A-infos without the
> watchdogs.

Amen, Shawn.

I'll do my part to decrease this crossposting. I'll take the pledge.

If the anarchist movement is good at anything, it's creating alternative
news services. From A-Infos to Indymedia to Autonomedia to Infoshop, you
all have plenty of sources.

Here are some links:

Indymedia
http://www.indymedia.org/

A-Infos
http://ainfos.tao.ca/

Openflows
http://www.openflows.org

InterActivist Info Exchange 
http://slash.autonomedia.org/

Infoshop News
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/

Infoshop.org News and Opinion Wire
http://www.infoshop.org/infoshop-news.html

I'm sure I'm leaving out a few...

Chuck0