[Air-l] Students or spammers -- the background

[Holly Kruse]

I have been dealing with this group of students in Korea -- as they identify
themselves when sent the form email message asking them to explain who they
are and why they want to join air-l -- on the subscription approval front
for months.  My sense with many of them a few months ago was that they were
in a class (one that met on Tuesday, because that's when the requests for
approval would show up in my mailbox) for which they are supposed to
subscribe to the list, and then post to the list.  My impression may, of
course, have been quite wrong.

As a reminder, let me just add that anyone who wants to subscribe to air-l
is sent a message to which they must respond before they are added.  The
idea is mainly to establish that these are real people who want to
subscribe, not the results of mass-subscribing bots.  The individuals in
question all responded, and said variously that they were students in Korea,
in many cases identifying the university, some saying that they were Chinese
students studying in Korea, and that they wanted to join the list to learn
more about the internet, or that they were in a class about the internet and
wanted to join the list.

There are a few different ways in which this recent problem can be handled,
and we on the exec should be able to come up with a fairly satisfactory
solution very soon.


Holly


-- 
Holly Kruse
Faculty of Communication
The University of Tulsa
600 S. College Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74104
918-631-3845
holly-kruse at utulsa.edu
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~holly-kruse