A fly in the ointment

[Seti]

I want to appologize in advance if this has already been discussed; I searched but couldn't find the topic.

Here comes the BIG RANT!! :-x

(just kidding)

But seriously, this is such a fantastic forum, UbuntuForums is a great online community. Pat yourselves on the back, because you people are certainly a fine bunch.
There is however, a fly in the ointment. (I love that expression)
Almost every time I check the "New Posts" page, I am confronted with new threads by a certain "Sue Fenton" and one other "Norah Armstrong". You know the threads I am referring to. These are spam, they look bad, they're stupid, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets annoyed. We are here to participate in a rich and vibrant linux community, not to get advertised to by spammers. I've already been warned once by a very friendly moderator (thanks again, U know who U R :wink: ) not to respond to these threads. But I'm afraid as long as new members join UbuntuForums and fall into the spam-trap, the annoyance will continue to be perpetuated.
Is there nothing that can be done??

[panickedthumb]

well, if we delete them they'll come back when the forums sync with the mailing lists again. The spam is from the ubuntu-users@ubuntu.com mailing list that we have aggregated into the forums. So essentially, there's very little that can be done. It's unfortunate and it's quite a nuisance, but the only thing to do would be to get rid of our mailing list integration, and since it's very valuable, we just learn to deal with it essentially.

Sorry, I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but I hope it clears things up.

[GrumpySimon]

Is there no way of hooking up a spam filter (spamassassin etc) or even a blacklist in between the forum and mailing list?

--Simon