Talk:Newsgroup spam

The article notes that newsgroup spam came before email spam, dating it as 1994. But another page notes that DEC made the first email spam in 1978 (anniversary is around today, give or takle a day or two). Both articles can't be correct. Rhialto 07:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that is right. The Thomas incident did mark the beginning of the never-ending modern wave, but there were isolated incidents of this kind of thing earlier in both mail and news. --iMb~Meow 14:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Citation

Please see WP:V and the associated documents regarding citing things from usenet and other self-published sources. Making the claim that " The first widely recognized Usenet spam (though not the most famous) was posted on January 18, 1994 by Clarence L. Thomas IV, a sysadmin at Andrews University. Entitled "Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon"" with the only citation being usenet violates WP:V. A credible source needs to make that claim or present that as fact in order for it to be used on wikipedia, otherwise its original research.--Crossmr 02:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article in an exception proving the rule. Obviously, an article about Usenet can legitimately cite Usenet! It is perfectly acceptable to ignore all rules in cases when they are nonsensical, that's why "ignore all rules" exists. --iMeowbot~Meow 02:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]