Hello Bioconductor list ... Thanks to the efforts of Martin Maechler for the mailing lists hosted on his site, the vast majority of spam messages has been removed. As the list administrator, I've noticed that the signal to noise ratio on held posts (posts which need admin approval) has increased by several orders of magnitude, such that the vast majority are now non-members posting valid messages. I set the list to members only posting last summer in response to the spam, but given the lower frequency - unless there is general wailing and gnashing of teeth - I'm going to remove that flag. From observation I'd say that this should result in no more then about one spam message a week, hopefully to improve with time. If the noise increases in the future, I'll look to setting it back to members only. -Jeff

> Thanks to the efforts of Martin Maechler for the mailing > lists hosted on > his site, the vast majority of spam messages has been removed. This is great news. Kudos to Martin! [...] > > I set the list to members only posting last summer in response to the > spam, but given the lower frequency - unless there is general > wailing and > gnashing of teeth - I'm going to remove that flag. *wail* *gnash* I would like to have people who want to participate on this mailing list at least to take the effort and subscribe to it, to be ready to return the helpfulness when they've gathered more experience. If someone wants to use this list as a read-only forum, they can use the Web interface. I admire the openness and patience of the Bioconductors, -semiconductors, and engine drivers who answer even the most basic questions on installation and analysis. But I would loathe the idea that someone asking for somebody else's time to find an answer they have not the time to find out by themselves, read the answer over the Web interface, and are not seen again. Would it be too much to ask for if Jeff is replaced by an automated answer of the mailing list owner inviting the caller to join the list? It might deter potential users but keeps the signal-to-noise ratio for everybody else lower. At the moment I consider Bioconductor much less of a point-click product than its designers plan it to be. Using it requires some effort on user's side. Subscribing to a mailing list causes less problems than almost everything else. Cheers Johannes