Hello all
As most of you are aware I am the list adminstrator for this mailing list
and about 25 others.
For the past year there has been more and more spam that is rejected from
the mailing lists by rootsweb. Hundreds and hundreds of emails every day.
However, the filters for whatever reason do not entirely stop all of it, and
it is sent to the list adminstrator (me) with a preface of {not a
subscriber}. My mailbox fills up with some of the worst filth you can imagine. And it
is right there in front of me and I can't stop it. Because the rootsweb
filter does not catch it, it comes to me from rootsweb - I certainly can't add
rootsweb to my blocked email addresses, so whatever they forward has to come
to my desktop.
Yesterday was the last straw. I wanted to show my 80 year old mother an
email that had been sent to me by a relative, and I opened my mailbox. Staring
at us were 12 emails with subject lines using language that you can simply
not imagine. My mother had the shock of her life.
And I have to look at it every day because I am the list administrator for
rootsweb mailing lists. I do not understand how their filters do not catch
such filth and vulgarity but for whatever reason they don't catch all of it.
Bottom line - I can't do this any more. It is very upsetting to me to see
this language and crudeness every day and have to deal with deleting all the
messages.
Each list probably only gets 3-4 a week but if you multiply that by all my
lists you can see that I see alot of it.
So... is there anyone on the mailing list that would be willing to adopt
this list? Someone who isn't burned out by seeing this garbage every day.
The job of administering the list is very easy - resolve issues on the list
(inapproriate behavior) and helping people subscribe/unsubscribe or answer
questions directed to you by list members - doens't happen often. For
virtually all the lists it is probably 5-10 minutes a day on average. Oh - and
deleting the foul emails.
So it is not the work involved, it is the vileness of humanity that has
finally worn me out. If you can deal with reading a foul subject line and
hitting delete, then please consider taking on the task of administering the list.
I didn't want any body to say they had not been warned and I wanted the
person offering to take the list to know upfront what the problem is.
If I do not get a volunteer then I will simply resign and the list will
revert to rootsweb with no moderating. This means you can still post to the list
(I will remain a member of most of them) but there will be no list
administrator to help if someone needs help. We will have to help each other.
Please consider taking this list on - you can then make a contribution back
to rootsweb for the help you have received from it.
Thank you all
Jo Hogle
Listowner