Spambayes modifications with web services

[Steve Holden]

benmorganpowell at gmail.com wrote:
> Thank you for the flippant remarks. Let's just say that I found them to
> be unproductive.
> 
> I would like to point out the process was not designed to be automatic
> and I don't believe made such a statement. I should clarify that my
> desire was to list each domain that was contained in a spam email, so
> that the user could then:
> 
>  - check if previously it has been reported as spam, or
>  - open the link in their browser, and
>  - check whether the domain was spam or ham, and then if spam
>  - post it to the web service ("Post Spam Site to Web Service").
> 
> Therefore, thanks, yes, I did "think through the consequences of my
> actions".
> 
> The line that reads "WARNING: DO NOT BUY FROM THIS WEBSITE. THE SPAMMER
> IS.....", was tongue in cheek, and it seems to be the line that stirred
> up the condescending comments. What I should have written was something
> more along the lines of:
> 
> "WARNING: The website <domain> has been reported by <x> users as a
> website that uses illegal spam email to generate business leads"
> 
> I think that is a perfectly useful and fair statement, which I cannot
> see damaging legitimate business enterprises.
> 
> I also think it would be quite useful for consumers to know that the
> domain name they are about to purchase had previously been misused by
> spammers, and was quite likely to be blacklisted by spam software.
> 
> I must say that I am surprised that the python group could be so
> unfriendly and unhelpful.
> 
> Many thanks.
> 
Personally I didn't regard the reply as unhelpful, and I believe the 
replier was honestly trying to get you to see that your rather naive 
suggestion was most unlikely to make things better.

In essence your proposal appears to be that we clog up the search 
services with long-lived references to pages in your sites that refer to 
the spammers' (short-lived) sites in derogatory terms. If you managed to 
get enough people to be so unwise then Google and the other search 
engines would be useless within a month, and the spammers' sites would 
dominate their content.

You say you specialize in "web programming and getting good results on 
Google", but you don't seem to know that much about how the spammers 
operate and how the web really works. Generally speaking any attempt to 
"fight back" by generating more traffic and more search engine entries 
will only make things worse. They certainly *won't* go away if you don't 
ignore them, and they *probably* won't go away even if you do. Ergo 
such "retaliation" is a waste of time.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC                     www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006                  www.python.org/pycon/