I e-mailed the admin of my NNTP server about the damn mailing list showing up here. They run a Spam filtering program (the Zippo Hippo), and he said they would tweek it to catch the mailing list and prevent it from showing up here. (by the way - this is a great reason to use Super Zippo as your NNTP server. The Hippo filters out about 90% of the spam before I ever see it, and requests for service are responded to faster than any other Internet service I've ever used).
For those of you who aren't on Zippo, he also included some addresses to write and complain about this. PLEASE NOTE: The people you will be writing to probably don't know about this, they are the system administrators of the domains this is coming from, and will probably be glad to "correct" the situation. Be polite, the odds of getting them to do something will go up. Be rude, and they will probably ignore you and send your message to YOUR sys-admin.
Here's the response from Super Zippo: ================================================= Hi Shimbo,
Thanks for sending the additional information. In this case there are two problems related to this issue...
*One it's a continuing advertisement for Comedy Central, and for that reason alone these would be commercial Spam messages.
*Two there is no way for the mail list users and the newsgroup users to communicate and carry a discussion thread in the group with one another, so you essentially are left with disjointed or fragmented postings. These are two separate ways of communicating and have no business being merged like this.
We've made a few tweeks to the Spam Hippo to help catch future postings coming in from this mailing list, and we forwarded a complaint to the domain from which this stuff is coming out of...
NNTP-Posting-Host: msunews.cl.msu.edu
If other people were unhappy with the past posting from this list, they may want to send a short, friendly letter to the following admins to let them know the problem that's occurring...
Administrative Contact: Greenberg, Lewis H. (LHG4) [email]
Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Nelson, Doug (DEN4) [email]
These guys are not running the list and are probably unaware of what might be going on, so the email exchange with them should be a cordial one. If you should have any questions Shimbo, please let me know.