Ken,<div><br></div><div>You made the thankless task sound so inviting...</div><div><br></div><div>Well, someone has finally asked for something that I MIGHT be able to help with. I wouldn't say I have a "STRONG mental map" though. Am I even watching the right lists? I suspect that the 15-30 minutes you mention may need to be expanded if I am not completely familiar with what is going on...</div>
<div><br></div><div>So...I'd like to say I'll give it a shot. I do have business guests coming from out of town to work on a project for the first 3 weeks of December, so I guess that would be as good a time as any to see if I touch it during times of increased workload!</div>
<div><br></div><div>I won't be near a computer until Monday the first due to Thanksgiving travel, but I read your plea, and having been an Airborne Ranger Medic for nearly 8 years, I felt a kinship to you and your thankless, annoying, and no doubt boring and tedious task.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I suppose it's the least I could do for all the help and feedback I have received from the community. But what if I can't keep up???!!!</div><div><br></div><div>Take care,</div><div><br></div>
<div>Rob<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Ken Causey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ken@kencausey.com">ken@kencausey.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Do you have 15-30 minutes per week you can spare? Have you been<br>
observing this community for a while and have gained a strong mental map<br>
of names of community participants and projects? If so then we need<br>
you.<br>
<br>
The Announcements list is a major spam magnet. Just as a rough guess I<br>
would say we receive on the order of 1000 spam per each valid<br>
submission. The list is fully moderated and to keep up with this volume<br>
of spam the list has to be moderated regularly.<br>
<br>
If you accepted this job you would:<br>
<br>
1. Start receiving far more spam in the form of announcements list<br>
moderation requests. The spam would be in the form of attachment to<br>
each request and the emails themselves have a standard format, so would<br>
be easy to filter out.<br>
<br>
2. Carefully look through the announcement moderation requests at each<br>
opportunity (hopefully at least once a day) looking for valid<br>
submissions. Realistically you can just scan the subjects which include<br>
the email address of the submitter. In all likelihood you will<br>
recognize an email address for a valid submission and then look at the<br>
message itself to confirm.<br>
<br>
All list moderators would get all messages and so missing one is no<br>
great problem as one of the other moderators would probably catch it.<br>
If you find a valid submission you would login to the moderation<br>
interface (web-based) and search for and accept only that submission,<br>
leaving the rest of the moderation queue.<br>
<br>
3. Once or twice a week (schedule to be determined and depends on<br>
number of volunteers) you would scan through the entire moderation queue<br>
for valid messages. In this case the easiest information to spot is the<br>
subject and so you would be looking for names of projects and relevant<br>
keywords. Mark each valid submission (if any) and then submit the<br>
entire moderation queue having all the spam deleted automatically.<br>
<br>
This is a largely thankless and annoying job. Very few announcements<br>
are sent to the announcements list yet. I wish I knew why and what to<br>
do about it. All I know to do at this point is be patient, and I'm<br>
asking you to assist me in this and cut down on the volume of messages I<br>
have to scan.<br>
<br>
Thank you,<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Ken Causey<br>
</font><br><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>