I want to apologize for a couple of XXX postings which made
their way onto the s-news list in the last couple of days. As you may
know, we have a number of checks which are applied to all postings submitted to
the s-news list. If any of a number of rules are satisfied then the
posting is sent to the list owner (me) for approval or rejection. This is
why the signal to noise level of this list is as high as it is.
This works fine and the software allows me to either reply
by e-mail or a web-based interface. The problem comes with the volume of SPAM
which is currently allowed on the internet. Over the last several days
several hundred SPAM were submitted along with a handful of valid posts which
had to be approved (mostly from e-mail addresses that are not subscribed
directly to s-news). Going through these has taken almost an hour a
day. As anyone who has attempted to do a task like this in the minimal
amount of time, it turns out to be error prone. Right now, I am the only
one who does this and I attempt to do it several times a day, 365 days a year.
The only way that I can think to address this problem is to
share the work so that it does not need to be done in such a hurry.
Unfortunately, the last several times that I have asked for volunteers to assist
in the tasks of running the list, none have appeared. I would again ask
for volunteers to assist in the daily tasks of keeping s-news available for the
S user community. I feel it is important, or I would not be doing it.
Please either e-mail me or the list for the discussion of
the s-news list, s-news-advisory@lists.biostat.wustl.edu.
Thanks.
-phil
J.
Philip Miller, Professor of Biostatistics
Washington University School of Medicine
Director
of Biostatistics Core, Siteman Cancer Center
Mail: Campus Box 8067, 660 S. Euclid Ave
St.
Louis, MO 63110
Physical
Address: 3349 Barnard
Phone: 314-362-3617, 314-362-3728 (fax)
email: phil@wubios.wustl.edu
web: http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/~phil