Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/E-mail spam

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[edit] E-mail spam

Okay, I'm not an expert on FAC, but this article really impressed me (I have never worked on it). It has quite a compilation of references. It has some pictures. It appears comprehensive to the best of my knowledge. The article is 44 kB, which is a bit long I suppose, but not too bad. All in all, a good example of Wikipedia's best. --Dmcdevit 05:32, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support: It's pretty darned comprehensive, although I think that some of the technical matter could be explained for neophytes. E.g. an article in Technology Review estimated that 94% of all spam targeting comes from web crawling. A single sentence could explain to folks that this is the "contact me" link on a web page and the directory at a company's web page. Also, there are print sources that could be useful. One that taught me a lot, when I was in charge of a system that had an open relay and needed to stop the spammers who were trying to work around my closing of the relay, was Steal This Computer Book, which teaches, alas, folks how to be black hats. Geogre 15:25, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support, complete and interesting. Could use a minor copyedit, though. Mgm|^(talk) 17:41, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I've worked extensively on this article -- the sections Gathering of e-mail addresses, Using other people's computers, Spam-support services, and Related vocabulary are largely my work, as well as the image in the Using other people's computers section. However, I do not think it is ready to be a featured article. Notably:
  • The Miscellaneous facts about spam email section is both disorganized and out of date, and is composed largely of anecdotes and pseudostatistics;
  • The Current events section mixes important facts with press-release material, and is in any event not particularly current -- which is not to say that an encyclopedia article should have a "current events" section.
  • There are throughout the text (including in my contributions, I'll admit) time-dependent words such as "recent" and "increasingly" which render the article automatically dated.
  • There are still a number of passages which read as "how-to" material rather than encyclopedia article material.
  • All in all, I think the article needs to be peer-reviewed by more editors who are familiar with:
    • large-scale email system administration;
    • spam and computer-crime law, especially outside the U.S. -- and with a focus on law as it is actually used to sue or prosecute spammers, not just urban legends about laws such as CAN-SPAM;
    • actual statistical analysis of spam message corpuses -- not just guesswork or hearsay -- regarding obfuscation and other features of spam messages. --FOo 17:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose repeatedly uses direct links from text (Wikipedia is not a repository of links) and bare numbered links which are very bad style style. Ideally use footnotes instead.
  • Wikipedia:Footnote3 is a style proposal, not a policy or even a real part of the Manual of Style. Wikipedia:Footnote describes Current guidelines which state, "If the purpose of the footnote is to direct the reader to an outside source, simply put the link to the source in single brackets." As footnote style is presently an unsettled matter it is not appropriate to bring up here. --FOo 21:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The very page you quote directly states clearly that it is a "New Proposed Footnote format" which has now become old and recommends reading Footnote3, but that aside, I do not object to any system of footnotes, including "invisible footnotes" "template based" footnotes (as Wikipedia:Footnote3) or even the ugly (IMHO) author/name footnotes. However, Wikipedia:Cite your sources has depreciated numbered links for a long time and the manual of style has been clear that they are not a good idea. For a normal article, this might be acceptable, but a featured article should live up to a higher standard. Failure to resolve this should clearly be a blocking objection. Mozzerati 20:00, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
      • No, no, no, no, no. Footnotes are *not* a requirement to be a FAC - the style guide pretty much lets this up to the writer. Objecting because it doesn't follow your particular choice of style is not valid. →Raul654 02:43, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
        • Hi; the objection is specific (if material at the end of the link changes we won't be able to tell) actionable (three separate suggestions for addressing this have been discussed on the talk page, not including my own footnoting suggestion) and does not cover my "particular choice" (any of the other three is fine by me). I can accept being overrulled by a massive consensus that the article is FA standard even so, but declaring my opinion invalid because you don't agree with it isn't okay. Mozzerati 06:59, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
          • This article uses a format that the manual of style says is OK. The featured article criteria says that it needs to fulfill standards set by the relavant wikiproject and the manual of style, which it does. Objecting to it because it doesn't use the format you prefer is inherently an invalid objection - your preferences do not trump the manual of style. →Raul654 14:06, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
            • I am not objecting to it because it doesn't use the format I prefer. Mozzerati 18:44, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
• Oppose - Needs a much longer and better lead section. An article this size needs three rather hefty paragraphs for that. Could use some summarizing in the future per Wikipedia:Summary style, but is OK for now (if a bit long). --mav 01:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose - nothing on MLM schemes, or multi-tiered spamming operations. - 203.35.154.254 02:36, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  What's a multi-tiered spamming operation? Is that like DHS Club? --FOo 02:56, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a shame this article failed as a FAC. The entire time I was reading it I was thinking that it was extremely well-written, and worthy of being a featured article. I guess consensus wasn't able to be obtained, but I wonder if anyone has considered a more recent push for making this article a FAC again. Thoughts? Justin 17:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• I've written a book on the subject. It's a subject riddled in technicality so bear with me sounding picky but there are many small errors in that add up to the wrong picture. This article would be better titled "Unsolicted bulk email" rather than spam and if the difference is not known then the article has not educated effectively. It's lobsided toward fraud spam and essentially ignores all other kinds of spam which is a disservice to the education goal.

From the get go, spammers are defined as anyone who sends an identical email to a list of recipients. Readers would infer that anyone who sends identical messages to lists are spammers. It goes on about fraud and thus infers the act of sending identical email to a list of recipients is wrong. In the vocabulary area, it says UBE is a synonym for spam. No, UBE is a permission status and not a synomym for spam.

There is no mention there that perfectly legit companies send legit email the exact (bulk to lists) same way. Newsletters for instance. They are not spam and not even in the realm of the Can Spam law. In commercial email, if the senders follow the rules and the recipient wants it (whether or not they opt in for it), then they are not spam. Most email sent via the biggest email service providers are monitored, sent to millions of recipients hourly and generate zip in complaint rates. The definition therefore breaks down right away and has inconsistencies later which I tried to change.

The intro second paragraph is outdated. Forget the word "unsolicted" when thinking of spam - permission is not the issue. It is correlated but not a cause nor conclusion. When asked if email should be opt in and if unsolicted is a problem, a major ISP spam director said, "People can send whatever they want, just don't get complaints." That is a supreme test for spam in the colloquial context.

While most people instantly think of bank scam emails or Nigerian royalty emails correctly as spam, heavily weighting the article about fraud spam is not balanced or an accurate depiction of what spam is.

Spam is a huge topic that has evolved in definition and emails have endured a myriad of absurd tests that simply don't work in defining/catching spam. There was an incorrect explanation in the article that opt in emails could render a commercial email as not spam. That is not accurate. Spam is any email that is unwelcome regardless of opt in status. It can be legit senders or scam senders. It can be from individuals or businesses.

In the U.S. the Can Spam law has regulations for all commercial email and it is legal to spam contrary to what the article wrote. I made a couple modifications to explain that (it said it was a crime to spam). It is a crime to spam without complying with the law .

The exploits section was good and a cause for the egregius spam as I updated to explain.

Sorry so long.