[OSM-newbies] Sudden increase in spam

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Brian Stempin <brian.stempin at gmail.com> wrote:
> What the crack is with the sudden increase in spam?

I don't see spam. I see a lot of people sending "hello" messages,
which is quite odd.

Based on further emails it seems this is a single group.

A bit of netiquite:

1. This is a list of hundreds of people. It's not the same as a
chatroom, so please don't say hello. That just clogs folks' email.

2. Not all of us are in school/have a school/want to be in school.
We're on the list because we want to help newbies with OSM.

3. If you have an OSM related question, then please, try to follow
these guidelines when posting your question:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

4. As its been noted, we also have help.osm.org for general questions,
and it's an excellent resource (as is the wiki).

5. If you want to chat with OSMers, use the IRC channel:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/IRC

> I'm pretty sure anyone
> with an email address that ends in "googlemail.com" is fake.

Googlemail.com is used by google in places where the name gmail is
blocked (some trademark issue). So that's the UK and Germany.

- Serge