Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.

On 2/12/2022 3:45 PM, Beliavsky wrote:
> Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.
I'm seeing very little spam in Thunderbird (eternal September).

On 22/02/12 11:34 PM, Gary Scott wrote:
> On 2/12/2022 3:45 PM, Beliavsky wrote:

>> Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see
>> lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum,
>> but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is
>> convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and
>> I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not
>> overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and
>> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.

> I'm seeing very little spam in Thunderbird (eternal September).

But that hasn't yet been bought by Google. Compiling a Fortran
program with gfortran at this moment also gives almost no spam
built into the executable! These things change of course when
after their acquisition these tools will be reduced to a small
paragraph in the Google Groups history:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News>

--
Jos

On 2/12/2022 1:45 PM, Beliavsky wrote:
> Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.

No spam by accessing this newsgroup via the NNTP news server
news.individual.net using any NNTP news reader (I use Thunderbird but
many other free alternatives). Accessing newsgroups via
news.individual.net cost about $12/year, but a small price to pay for
not having to deal with the spam. I have used this service for about 10
years and have probably seen 2 or 3 spam messages per year on average.

On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 7:18:06 AM UTC+1, baf wrote:
> On 2/12/2022 1:45 PM, Beliavsky wrote:
> > Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.
> No spam by accessing this newsgroup via the NNTP news server
> news.individual.net using any NNTP news reader (I use Thunderbird but
> many other free alternatives). Accessing newsgroups via
> news.individual.net cost about $12/year, but a small price to pay for
> not having to deal with the spam. I have used this service for about 10
> years and have probably seen 2 or 3 spam messages per year on average.

Like Beliavsky, I use Google groups to read the newsgroup, for pretty much the same reasons. Whenever I see obvious spam I report it. It at least helps with the indicated messages. But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported! It made the Hacker News and The Register online news sites. clf is not the only newgroup that is affected by this.

Regards,

Arjen

On Saturday, February 12, 2022 at 1:45:37 PM UTC-8, Beliavsky wrote:
> Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google..com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.

Unless others see something different, I see 8 spam messages in three months.

I get many spam e-mail messages a day, and manage to ignore them, and I suspect I
can live with 0.09/day here.

Besides, they seem to like capital letters, which makes it very easy to ignore them.

On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!

What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
possible to post through google, or what?

I have noticed that clf discussions have mostly tapered off in the last
few months. Maybe that ban, whatever its consequences, was the reason?

SPAM postings, particularly from new domains, are more an issue of the
NNTP news server than they are for the reader software on your computer.
I'm seeing about one SPAM post per day in clf through forteinc.com,
which is cheap but not free. That's one too many, but it is not so bad
that it overwhelms the actual fortran posts that I do see here, so I am
tolerating it so far.

I do admit that I miss the old days in the 1990s, when clf and
sci.math.num-analysis groups were both on topic and more active. There
were many cross-posts, as many of the participants were, like me,
typically interested in both areas. As others have mentioned, that
latter group was taken over a decade ago almost entirely by SPAM,
probably never to recover.

$.02 -Ron Shepard

On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 12:42:35 PM UTC-5, Ron Shepard wrote:
> On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> > But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!
> What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
> that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
> possible to post through google, or what?
>
> I have noticed that clf discussions have mostly tapered off in the last
> few months. Maybe that ban, whatever its consequences, was the reason?

Few young people use Usenet, and older people die. Also, Fortran Discourse is now a better forum with more activity and code formatting. Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/fortran/ is pretty active. But there's good stuff here too, and we should keep it that way.

Beliavsky <beliavsky@aol.com> schrieb:

> Few young people use Usenet, and older people die. Also,
> Fortran Discourse is now a better forum with more activity and
> code formatting.

"Better" is debatable.

Unless they have changed their requirement for "welcoming" language,
I am not joining.

On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 3:40:38 PM UTC-5, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Beliavsky <beli...@aol.com> schrieb:
> > Few young people use Usenet, and older people die. Also,
> > Fortran Discourse is now a better forum with more activity and
> > code formatting.
> "Better" is debatable.
>
> Unless they have changed their requirement for "welcoming" language,
> I am not joining.

Could you explain your objection a bit? In the past, when comp.lang.fortran was more active,
there was at least one poster who was often abusive, and I can think of pairs of posters who
regularly had the same quarrels. Fortran Discourse wants to avoid that. Is there a specific
item in the Terms of Service https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/tos that you object to?

If someone posts erroneous information on Fortran Discourse, it is certainly allowed to point
out the error.

On Monday, February 14, 2022 at 6:42:35 AM UTC+13, Ron Shepard wrote:
> On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> > But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!
> What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
> that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
> possible to post through google, or what?
>
> I have noticed that clf discussions have mostly tapered off in the last
> few months. Maybe that ban, whatever its consequences, was the reason?
>
> SPAM postings, particularly from new domains, are more an issue of the
> NNTP news server than they are for the reader software on your computer.
> I'm seeing about one SPAM post per day in clf through forteinc.com,
> which is cheap but not free. That's one too many, but it is not so bad
> that it overwhelms the actual fortran posts that I do see here, so I am
> tolerating it so far.
>
> I do admit that I miss the old days in the 1990s, when clf and
> sci.math.num-analysis groups were both on topic and more active. There
> were many cross-posts, as many of the participants were, like me,
> typically interested in both areas. As others have mentioned, that
> latter group was taken over a decade ago almost entirely by SPAM,
> probably never to recover.
>
> $.02 -Ron Shepard

On Monday, February 14, 2022 at 6:42:35 AM UTC+13, Ron Shepard wrote:
> On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> > But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!
> What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
> that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
> possible to post through google, or what?
>
> I have noticed that clf discussions have mostly tapered off in the last
> few months. Maybe that ban, whatever its consequences, was the reason?
>
> SPAM postings, particularly from new domains, are more an issue of the
> NNTP news server than they are for the reader software on your computer.
> I'm seeing about one SPAM post per day in clf through forteinc.com,
> which is cheap but not free. That's one too many, but it is not so bad
> that it overwhelms the actual fortran posts that I do see here, so I am
> tolerating it so far.
>
> I do admit that I miss the old days in the 1990s, when clf and
> sci.math.num-analysis groups were both on topic and more active. There
> were many cross-posts, as many of the participants were, like me,
> typically interested in both areas. As others have mentioned, that
> latter group was taken over a decade ago almost entirely by SPAM,
> probably never to recover.
>
> $.02 -Ron Shepard

I use Google Groups because I couldn't get other news servers to work; my 2 problems with it are (1) it lets you report an abusive group but I don't know how to report an abusive posting in an otherwise good group, such as spam in c.l.f; (2) when I first click on a group I am told when I joined that group, but much more useful information would be the date of its latest message.

On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 5:29:01 PM UTC-5, jfh wrote:
> I use Google Groups because I couldn't get other news servers to work; my 2 problems with it are (1) it lets you report an abusive group but I don't know how to report an abusive posting in an otherwise good group, such as spam in c.l.f;

Once you click on a thread, at the top there is an octagon-shaped icon with an exclamation point. Click on that to report spam or other abuse.

See the "Report a conversation" section at https://support.google.com/groups/answer/81275?hl=en .

Beliavsky <beliavsky@aol.com> schrieb:
> On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 3:40:38 PM UTC-5, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> Beliavsky <beli...@aol.com> schrieb:
>> > Few young people use Usenet, and older people die. Also,
>> > Fortran Discourse is now a better forum with more activity and
>> > code formatting.
>> "Better" is debatable.
>>
>> Unless they have changed their requirement for "welcoming" language,
>> I am not joining.
>
> Could you explain your objection a bit?

To reiterate something I've written before: If someonde demands
"welcoming, inclusive" language of me, I fell neither welcome
nor included. This was in the code of conduct the last time
I checked.

_Prescribing_ a certain mode of speech (instead of trying to
moderate excesses) is what too many people and organizations try
to do these days, in all manners of discourse.

I don't like it, and I will not submit to such rules if I can
avoid it at all.

The presentation of the initiators made it pretty clear that this
code of conduct is very central to them, so it is unlikely to
be changed in a way that would be acceptable to me. If it is,
please let me know.

>In the past, when comp.lang.fortran was more active,
> there was at least one poster who was often abusive,

Certainly. My killfile solved that for me. (I have one member
of J3 in my killfile, and I certainly don't mean Steve Lionel :-)

On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 6:42:35 PM UTC+1, Ron Shepard wrote:
> On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> > But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!
> What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
> that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
> possible to post through google, or what?
>
This happened early june last year (I reported it, not quite sure anymore how and where, and was interviewed, 15 minutes of fame, I suppose ;)) by The Register about it. It happened to several newsgroups at the time. clf was simply inaccessible from within Google groups and that remained so for a couple of days with the message that it was due to spam.

Regards,

Arjen

On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 14:28:58 -0800 (PST)
jfh <harperjf2@gmail.com> wrote:
> I use Google Groups because I couldn't get other news servers to work;

For me news.aioe.org , news.eternal-september.org and
news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de work fine ; last one is read only. If you
want to look into whatever issues you have with newsservers , you can discuss
it in some newsgroup. For newsreaders news.software.readers is appropriate.
I'm not sure if one exists for server issues but you can use comp.misc for
a start and ask them to crosspost any replies to any newsgroup which may be
more appropriate.

Regarding spam , looking back up to 2021-11-02 I don't see a single spam post
on this group. Some other groups have plenty. sci.math.num-analysis only
seems to have spam apart from the occasional conference announcement. It has
been months or years since I last saw spam which did not come from
googlegroups.

On 2/13/22 2:24 PM, Beliavsky wrote:
> On Sunday, February 13, 2022 at 12:42:35 PM UTC-5, Ron Shepard wrote:
>> On 2/13/22 4:05 AM, Arjen Markus wrote:
>>> But note that about half a year ago, the clf newgroup was banned by Google altogether, because of the spam that was reported!
>> What exactly does it mean that clf was banned by Google? Does that mean
>> that clf can no longer be read through google, or that it is no longer
>> possible to post through google, or what?
>>
>> I have noticed that clf discussions have mostly tapered off in the last
>> few months. Maybe that ban, whatever its consequences, was the reason?
>
> Few young people use Usenet, and older people die. Also, Fortran Discourse is now a better forum with more activity and code formatting. Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/fortran/ is pretty active. But there's good stuff here too, and we should keep it that way.

I do follow the fortran discourse discussions, and I have even posted a
few things there. However, I find the interface awkward. For example, I
would like to be able to log in and view just the new posts since my
previous login, the way that clf works, but so far I don't see how to do
that. Except for that, it does appear to be active in the sense that
there are several posts per day. Another difference is that posts seem
to disappear there, so it is sometimes difficult to locate something
from a few weeks ago. In contrast, this clf newsgroup has posts that
date back decades, and sometimes recent replies to those old posts even
show up, probably because someone did not notice the original post date.

So far, it seems most of the postings there are from newbies. Many are
asking how to do something in fortran that they know how to do in
another language, such a python. Many are asking why they can't use the
exact same syntax as they do in another language. If it is to remain a
popular forum, I guess those kinds of posts must be tolerated. And there
are some sophisticated questions too, so there is a mix.

Why on earth would anyone ban a J3 member?

In any case, I hope clf manages to survive, google bans and all.

$.02 -Ron Shepard

Ron Shepard <nospam@nowhere.org> schrieb:

> Why on earth would anyone ban a J3 member?

Send me your e-mail address, and I'll tell you more :-)

Le 12/02/2022 à 22:45, Beliavsky a écrit :
> Viewing c.l.f. via https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.fortran I see lots of spam. There are probably better ways of accessing the forum, but Google Groups does not make you install anything and is convenient. I will make a point of notifying Google of spam daily, and I hope others do too, so that the venerable comp.lang.fortran is not overrun, as https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.python and https://groups.google.com/g/sci.math.num-analysis have been.

For those who want to access newsgroups through the web and wish a
better service than Google Groups, they may give a try to

http://news2.nemoweb.net/

Yes the interface is in french, and no it is not perfect. But overall
(much) better than GG IMO. At least on a computer (almost not usable on
the small screen of a smartphone or even a tablet)

Beware : there is no httpS, only http, so pay attention to use a unique
password here.

--
"...sois ouvert aux idées des autres pour peu qu'elles aillent dans le
même sens que les tiennes.", ST sur fr.bio.medecine
ST passe le mur du çon : <j3nn2hFmqj7U1@mid.individual.net>

Ron Shepard <nospam@nowhere.org> schrieb:

> Why on earth would anyone ban a J3 member?

Maybe a bit more explanation...

SbegenaSna vf n W3 zrzore, juvpu V sbhaq bhg nsgre V xvyysvyrq uvz.

On 2/19/22 3:53 AM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Ron Shepard <nospam@nowhere.org> schrieb:
>
>> Why on earth would anyone ban a J3 member?
>
> Maybe a bit more explanation...
>
> SbegenaSna vf n W3 zrzore, juvpu V sbhaq bhg nsgre V xvyysvyrq uvz.

I guess the next question is why would a J3 member post anonymously and
conceal his identity and his membership?

I have considered adding him to my killfile too, but I never actually
did it, I have just tolerated his posts. Actually, I've only rarely
added actual people to my killfile list over the decades, even those
posting anonymously. Most of my entries have obviously been fake
accounts selling prescription drugs online, political conspiracy
theories, or textbook solution manuals. CLF does have a few of those
right now, but as I said previously, they only appear rarely through my
news server. Others must be reporting them as spammers because they
usually don't post more than once.

As far as J3 members, I do miss Richard Maine's insightful posts here in
CLF.

Speaking of spam, I developed an iterative method to compute
eigenvectors back in the 1990s. I called it the subspace projected
approximate matrix method, which has the acronym SPAM. I thought it was
cute at the time, but in hindsight it has caused me problems over the
years because legitimate emails with that in the title sometimes get
directed automatically into my junk email folder. Spam back then was
not the problem that it has become since.

$.02 -Ron Shepard

Ron Shepard <nospam@nowhere.org> schrieb:

> Speaking of spam, I developed an iterative method to compute
> eigenvectors back in the 1990s. I called it the subspace projected
> approximate matrix method, which has the acronym SPAM. I thought it was
> cute at the time, but in hindsight it has caused me problems over the
> years because legitimate emails with that in the title sometimes get
> directed automatically into my junk email folder. Spam back then was
> not the problem that it has become since.

I well remember the early spam - Cantor & Siegel, Sanford Wallace.
For a time, I bounced every spam via an AGIS domain to AGIS.

Even at the time, it was clear that there was a clear asymmetry
between the sender and the receiver of spam.

Regarding unfortunate names - there is a rather nice
digital circuit simulator called "Digital" (to be found at
https://github.com/hneemann/Digital ). Almost un-googable
with that name.