As many of you know, I have been on a crusade all this year against spam advertisements in our Windows Live Space comments. (Please see: “Windows Live Spam Central Reporting Service” is open for business!)

My feedback has reached the ears of a Windows Live Support team member who assures me that they are working to make a better system for reporting spammers.

Posting Spam advertisements is a violation of the Code of Conduct we all agree to. But, the Spammers are ever vigilant, posting hundreds of spam comments a day.

Windows Live support will soon come up with a better, faster way to deal with reports and close the accounts. As soon as a system is put in place, he promises he will let me know.

When that time comes, I will be writing a celebratory blog post for the Windows Live Clubhouse (and doing handstands and cartwheels).

Then, as well as now, we need to keep vigilant and report spammers as soon as we see them so they do not have time to post any place else. We all have better things to do than delete spam every day.

In addition, we will want to remind newcomers and others unaware of the everlasting battle against spam so they know to report, and not just delete spam. The quicker spammers are reported, the quicker their accounts are closed.

I propose that there be a “poster”of some sort, that we can post in an html module, for instance, that we can use to remind visitors to our space.

From a very small age, I can remember posters and public service announcements from the US Forest Service. There would be a picture of Smokey Bear: Smokey says: “Only you can prevent forest fires”.

Naturally, “Only You Can Fight Spam” comes to mind…. Also, “Got Spam?”, from the USA “Got Milk?” campaign, sounds nice.

Copyrighted images will not be appropriate. (Smokey Bear was just an example.)

If anybody would like to design a poster, I propose that you show it in a blog entry, and leave a trackback of your blog’s url on this post. Trackbacks show at the very bottom of this post, below comments. (Please see: Trackbacks for Dummies – A Step by Step Pictorial guide to adding Trackbacks in Windows Live Spaces Blog entries)

I know we have a lot of clever people in Windows Live, people with natural talent and access to graphics software. I hope to see some of your ideas soon.

Once we see how many people want to submit posters, we can decide how to vote. Or, we might decide to use all of them!

Have fun!

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