What happened to the forum shortcut that used to live under the "HELP tab" on the Reporting page? I used to pop over to the forums when I was on the Reporting Page by clicking on HELP and choosing forums. Now the only way to get there seems to be to click on HELP and then doing a SEARCH for "forums". There must still be a quicker way???

Very interesting...someone at IronPort has indeed removed the descriptions and links to *both* the forums and the newsgroups from the main Help page at www.spamcop.net:

http://www.spamcop.net/help.shtml

They've been linked there for years, and are suddenly gone (although they still show up on the Site Map). Wonder if it has anything to do with the difference of opinion between the SpamCop Admin (Don) and the "regulars" here about what constitutes "rudeness" towards people coming here for help?

DT

Very strange .... code is actually still there (at present) just made 'invisible' be the strange extra code bits inserted; <!-- Removed as obsolete .... query sent upstream, though noting that my last request for input hasn't been responded to either.

Well...just in case the "sky" is really falling, and the proverbial plug is pulled on the forums, the newsgroups, or both, there's a Google Group named "spamcop" that was started a few years ago, but has lain dormant. Just saying there's a place where people could potentially regroup in a worst-case scenario.

DT

Not a clue folks. 12 hours gone by with no response from Don, Deputies, JT, Trevor, IronPort. IronPort contact was via re-opening a ticket opened up about me getting access to the IronPort Nation Support Forum in an attempt to possibly get some answers about just how SenderBase was making some ranking/reputation decisions. Hard to believe, but can't discount that there may be some connection there.

A response from the SpamCop.net side ..."my request for access to the IronPort Support Forum has nothing to do with changes to the spamcop.net site." End of response.

You can still get to the forums (and presumably the ngs) through Spamcop email help. Maybe, the higher ups have listened to Don's complaints that forum regulars are rude to new posters and do not represent spamcop well.

They have just disconnected the links - they haven't actually taken all mention of the forum out - or maybe that was an oversight. If you click on it, it takes you back to the original help page.

Miss Betsy

Where is this "Spamcop email help"?

DT

[sarcasm mode]Well, that's certainly a big relief, and clarifies the entire situation![/sarcasm mode]

DT

spamcop.net home page->Help Home (last paragraph on right)->SpamCop mail service (third item on list)->SpamCop Mail FAQ->Where can I get further assistance? (next to last item)->SpamCop Email Forum->Forum

There is also a link to ngs which I haven't tested.

You can also get there spamcop.net->How do I contact a SpamCop Representative?->Email Service Support which goes to the page that has the forum link. This page also has an entry about the SpamCop Forum which takes you back to Help Home.

However, I just tried spamcop.net->Help Home->Table of Contents->General Information about Spamcop->How can I get help? How can I report a bug? How can I suggest a feature?->Answer page has a link to SpamCop Forum which works There are also two FAQ about asking and answering questions in the forum.

Miss Betsy

Thanks for the extra investigation, Miss Betsy. If the intention was to limit connections to unofficial venues like this, they've clearly not done a very thorough job. They only hid the primary links, and yet the silence that Wazoo has encountered when asking for an explanation is curious. The message I posted in the newsgroup about this has also been met with the "sound of crickets chirping," even though SC Deputy Richard W, who apparently edits portions of the SC site, has been there and posted since then, apparently ignoring the question.

DT

I noticed the deafening silence in the ng. None of regulars posted either, nada nothing.

Yep...and maybe there's nothing to this at all....but the removal of the forum and newsgroup links from the primary SC Help page does seem intentional, so it probably means something...we're just in the dark as to exactly what.

DT

For starters, the 'silence' has been broken a bit. I now have some commentary on some of the background on the page change. However, details are not available for public discourse. Although I did state that I'd try to defend folks and portray things in the best light possible, I have to admit that I've been staring at this screen for quite a while and have yet to some up with a way to try to address the whole of the situation without talking to specifics. So, best I can do is state that some dialog does exist at this point. It has been suggested that if another change occurs, it will be like most SpamCop.net fixes in the past .... it will just happen.

A bit more traffic from the newsgroup;
[Scspamcop] Re: Forum and Newsgroup links removed from SC Help page Wazoo

Assumedly, only the paid-staff and perhaps the Beta testers know, but .. perhaps the upcoming roll-out of the "new" SpamCop.net may offer the answer/explanation to the "commented out as obsolete" section of the newsgroup and Forum links on the existing spamcop.net web-page ...????

Wishful thinking! Cisco is certainly not going to put up with independent thinkers such as appear on the Spamcop Forums.

No self-respecting corporate entity would like to have renegades such as the regulars here associated with their corporate image!

Miss Betsy

PS I am not really anti-corporation - in fact, I have a good friend who works for Cisco.

Wazoo's term "answer/explanation" in no way implies to me restoration of forums and newsgroups to the (semi) official support effort, nor does it need to be explicit. But it should, indeed resolve it all one way or the other, either in omission or in commission, as is said of other sins .

Ducking away from the Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung scenarios, this should at least resolve the gloomy predictions in days of yore of a move away from voluntary reporting - the public acknowledgment of 'Beta testers' seems most likely to acknowledge the continuance of that aspect of the evidential model. One more thing we can probably anticipate is the restoration of Outlook emailed submissions (given the 'killed' help item in the official FAQ). Reporting without e-mailed/quick reporting of Outlook evidence would be a real deal breaker given the high incidence of spam to corporate addresses in particular. And maybe some fixes to the 'mysterious' causes of certain stats irregularities seen over these many years. But I could be wrong about all of that, conjecture is fruitless and another day will reveal what is to be revealed. Every fiber/fibre of me is aquiver in antici ... pation.

Yeah, but it occurred to me to wonder who are the beta testers? I'm not one. Seems to me that having paid for my SC membership for 10 years and used it to report 100,000 spams (or more) I might at least have been extended an invite. Think I'll go eat worms.

-- rick

"Eat worms"? Haven't heard that for a while. You from the upper mid-west? My first wife's family would 'go to the garden and eat worms.'


Yes that is a lose but if Outlook randomizes the header what good is the input?

When the Outlook issue first came to light there were some post here trying to make sense of headers but it fizzled out with no results IIRC. I guess payed staff might be more motivated to included Outlook reported spam.

I certainly don't know of any beta testers. Never mind Ric, your fellow users have good reason to be grateful for your help and advice in these pages.
No good at all - but if it's within SC's power to fix it I'm sure they will, though that has to be a mighty big "if", with MS in the mix. As I had occasion to remark in another venue recently, readers of New Scientist magazine might recall that in the issues of 15 November 1997 and 8 September 2007 Richard Gott III has reckoned from the Copernican principle (our location in time and space is not special) that the estimate for the future of humanity, with 200,000 years on the clock to date, is a further 5,128 to 7,800,000 years with 95% confidence. We're running out of time ...

Never mind, within a handful of hours more we might have some answers.

...True if you stop at Cro Magnon man but if you extend us back to the earliest of genus Homo, we've used up more like 2.5 million years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution)!

From what I see, the only indication of change has been the parsed version identification itself. The web-page does not appear to have been touched at all, still showing the commented out as obsolete section where the dialog and pointers to the newsgroups and Forum still exist within the code.

Parse output doesn't seem to have changed, results are the same. I could say that things seem a bit faster, but that's really hard to say, not knowing the rest of the situation at the time of my submittals. On the other hand, I did run into issues that made it appear that all the involved servers aren't talking to each other fast enough (my first guess, anyway.) [Issue posted into the Topic 'announcement' in the Reporting Help Forum section.]

Okay, those like Steve, adamant about including the (partly) arboreal Homo habilis in their forfathers/mothers, have a reprieve - the lower future lifetime figure is 64,000 years.

And the instructions/advice page for 'full headers' for Outlook in the official FAQ is unchanged (page outline only). The more it changes ... the more it is the same. Even looking at the stats charts following resumptions, the processing cycles seem the same, within the range of past fluctuation. Well, I guess that is mostly a *good* thing, assuming the reported snaggles with transitory 'to be reported'-'already reported' responses fade away.

...Umm, wouldn't it be the reverse -- we have even less time, 'cause we've used up 2.5 million of our (maximum) 7.8 million? <g>
...Actually, I'm willing to include in my ancestors the Australopithecines, which reduces our maximum time left to about 3.9 million years - half!

Boy, are we ever O/T! But no, looking at the 'balance of probabilities' consequent on the 'we're in no special space and time' assumption (the Copernican principle) means we rule out the probability of being in the lower 2.5% of our lifetime - 1/40th - (lifetime of the species, in this case) because it is 'unlikely' and we similarly rule out the upper 2.5% so to leave the (most likely) inner 95% which accordingly ranges from 1/39th of our known existence to 39 times our known existence. So, if you increase the period of known existence you proportionally increase both ends of the predicted future range. Thus (the lower ends) if 200,000 -> 5,128 then 2,500,000 -> 64,103, etc.

"95% confidence" is the usual (minimum) acceptance level for an extrapolation/prediction, it is the 'practically safe bet', as used by pollsters - the honest ones¹ - and other statisticians when they need to draw defensible conclusions out of uncertain conditions. Bayesian probability estimates are said to produce similar results to these simple probability ones but I wouldn't know about that offhand.

In any case, the more you include non-human ancestry, the more you include non-human progeny/descendants (pre human->human->post human, Vs human ->human).

¹Not to point fingers but from what I have seen pollsters in the US are the most honest around, in terms of statistical methodology and transparency. Probably because the US public is comparatively well-educated in such matters and would routinely bring them to task should they publish grossly misleading results. There may be bad pollsters in the US but I am definitely happy with the work of the ones I have seen (in terms of the 'basics', not considering questionnaire design which is actually critical). Some other places, maybe not so much.

I also see the <!-- commented out as obsolete [...] --> section on the Help page but the forums are quite obvious and in plain sight on the Site map page... at the moment (as Miss Betsy mentioned somewhere higher in this thread). Just in case some high-handed do-gooder removes it from there too, I'm adding forum.spamcop.net to my browser's Bookmarks. And it's nice to know that not only the Spamcop NNTP forums still exist, but in addition there is a "spamcop" Google Group which has lain dormant for several years but could be revived if peer-help ceased being welcome anywhere at *.spamcop.net.

That's pretty much the bottom line here for the moment. But I couldn't help myself in tidying up a previous O/T observation of mine ...
Talking random sampling there - the selection of the demographic (non-random surveying) is another matter http://www.dailymotion.com/user/dilbertani...dead-people_fun