<div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Ian and everyone,<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thank you Juergen for your helpful recommendation. That's what I would have suggested. Another option, if needed, is to subscribe from another email address (i.e. non-institutional address) if that helps you. If we do not recognize your email address (especially for non-institutional addresses) we will ask why you want to join the list. That is to prevent spammers from joining, not because we don't want you to subscribe!<br></div><div><br></div><div>As I think we're all seeing, the amount of email spam, especially spoofing the email addresses of known individuals or organizations, is expanding rapidly and while some of that goes on behind the scenes so we don't see it because of the technology we have protecting our email accounts, there's still some that gets through and more importantly it's becoming much harder to tell the difference between legitimate emails and spam meant to look like legitimate emails. My impression is that spam filters are becoming more cautious and therefore flagging more legitimate messages as possible spam, so a lot of that ends up in our spam folders rather than our inboxes.</div><div><br></div><div>For the LingTyp list, we are very careful about who can send messages to the list (we verify each subscriber individually), and this means that we can avoid spam being sent out on the list. For that reason, it should be reasonably safe to set up a filter that never marks any LingTyp emails as spam, although of course you should still be cautious about clicking links and the content in messages especially if something seems off, because as I said there are so many spam messages these days that are meant to look like legitimate emails. A spammer could in principle include information that makes it look like a message is sent from LingTyp (the email subject line for example), although it would not actually be sent to members through the listserv. (There's actually a lot of spam submitted to the list, but through the settings and manually filtering as needed, we're able to stop it from being sent out. Apparently there's a big market for office chairs these days, among other things!)<br></div><div><br></div><div>If in doubt, you can always check the archives online: <a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/">https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/</a> -- those are updated in real time, so you can follow messages sent to the list there if you don't have access to your email or if you want to verify you are currently receiving messages. This is also a way to verify that if you submitted a message to the list it was actually posted and set out to everyone. (It might take a few minutes to update on the website, just like how sometimes it takes a few minutes for an email to actually appear in your inbox after it was sent.)</div><div><br></div><div><b>However, there is something all of you can do to help with this:</b> we don't have many options to prevent LingTyp emails from being marked as spam, and part of it is that organizations and email servers are generally cautious about any non-personal messages sent out to a list, which includes Lingtyp. <b>But what you can each do is carefully mark individual LingTyp messages in your spam folders as "not spam".</b> That should eventually train the algorithms for at least your personal email account to not classify those messages as spam, but given the large readership of this list if everyone works together on it, <b>we may be able to crowdsource a reclassification in general.</b> Personally I receive a handful of messages each month as spam and I go through each one to make sure they're marked as "not spam", to encourage the Gmail spam filters to do better the next time. This rate is about the same for several other Linguistics email lists I'm subscribed to. (As an administrator of the list, I might have a different experience that some of you, including receiving various additional filtered spam messages and updates from the server to check. If you are having a different experience, please contact me to let me know what's going on. Ian, your experience in particular sounds extreme, so please send me an email directly to let me know: (1) what percentage of emails are marked as spam, (2) which email provider and client you are using, and any other information you think might be helpful. I'm not sure how much I can do about it-- Juergen's suggestion is best as a practical solution-- but the information will be helpful just to know what's going on.)</div><div><br></div><div>I should also take this opportunity to mention some other technical details about the list. I'll keep this relatively short, but please feel free to contact me if you have questions or concerns. There have been some technical issues going on over the past several months with the server, which generally seem to work themselves out after a few days, but it can be very confusing for individual subscribers when some of the automated settings go wrong. One problem is that some members have been automatically temporarily disabled or unsubscribed due to "bounces", i.e. the server finding that some messages sent to those subscribers are not actually being received by those subscribers. This is a widespread problem not related to particular individuals or even particular organizations (although it does seem to happen in waves, e.g. many or most emails at a particular university being temporarily disabled, presumably because of some kind of communication disruption between the LingTyp server and the organization's email system; it has also happened to general email providers such as Gmail, though). Usually this works itself out after a few days, and unfortunately we don't have direct access to all of the lower level server settings to work out what is going on. In fact, it's been very confusing to try to troubleshoot this because a lot of the information seems to be inconsistent, and it is hard to identify patterns. I'm trying to keep an eye on this and figure out what the underlying causes are, but as I said for the most part it seems to work itself out when the server resets something a few days later. One thing everyone should know is that if you are having any problems with your subscription to LingTyp, it isn't your fault personally (nor an intentional attempt to remove you from the list) and may just be a temporary glitch. If more than that, please contact me because the more information I have to resolve these issues the better. Additionally, remember that you can always follow along with the conversations on the archives (linked above).</div><div><br></div><div>Finally, I recently received a report that there is a widely used spam filtering service that has marked LingTyp as spam, and this means that some organizations have actually blocked our messages from being received at all, not even in the spam folder. If you are mysteriously not receiving any messages (confirm this with the archives), or if any colleagues as you about this since they may not see this message, then that could be the reason. It is my understanding that the organizations do not have direct control over which emails are blacklisted, because this is part of the security service that they subscribe to. I'm still looking into the technical reasons for this, but I understand that it is due to the IP address from which they LingTyp emails are being sent, i.e. the Linguist List server that hosts our email list, so again that is also not something we control. There are limited options for resolving this, but I'm looking into what we may be able to do, and also keeping an eye on whether this will be a temporary or permanent problem. If your organization is experiencing this, please let me know!<br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Again, you can all help by manually marking any LingTyp messages in your spam folders as "not spam", to retrain the algorithms</b>. Eventually, this may have an impact on the classifications of messages to the list in general. Similarly, <b>please do NOT mark as "spam" any messages you just aren't interested in on the list</b>. In that case, you can simply delete them, or if you have decided you're not interested in any messages on the list you can unsubscribe. We will never send you messages you don't want if you've unsubscribed, so there's no need to use spam filtering for this list. That will also preserve the quality of the list for those who are subscribed. The algorithms behind spam filtering are opaque but as with all similar technologies it boils down to training data that classifies emails as "spam" or "not spam" and the algorithms work from there to identify similar patterns in other messages to guess what is spam. And one pattern might be whether something is sent from an email list (either ours specifically or in general). Most spam filtering algorithms work roughly with something like "points" assigned for various properties of the message (or at least traditionally did, while newer AI algorithms might not have easily identifiable parts in that sense, but overall function similarly), so messages with enough "points" would be considered spam, past a certain threshold.</div><div><br></div><div>This may be more information than most members probably wanted at this time, but I hope it's helpful, and I also would like to hear from you about your individual experiences, especially if they don't match up with what I wrote above, or if you have any questions.</div><div><br></div><div>Finally, I'm sorry for any disruptions you may have experienced. Right at the moment with the ALT meeting in Austin coming up I don't want to disrupt the list further by changing any significant settings, but after that I will continue looking into this and what our options may be for bigger changes if needed.</div><div><br></div><div>As a backup, you can always access the archives to read messages (<a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/">https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/</a>) and if you are subscribed (even if you are not receiving messages) you should be able to send a message to the list. (If you are unable to send a message to the list-- check the archives to see if it was posted-- you can let me know directly, and I can either confirm/reset your subscription or just forward your message to the list myself.)<br></div><div><br></div><div>I think that covers the main points, but please contact me if you have any additional questions.</div><div><br></div><div>Daniel Ross</div><div>ALT webmaster</div><div>(& LingTyp list administrator)<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 9:44 AM Juergen Bohnemeyer <<a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu">jb77@buffalo.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="msg3408046180893152759">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Dear all – I imagine everybody is already aware of this, since I’m, like, the least tech-savvy linguist I know. But just in case, here it is:<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Many mail clients seem to have spam filters with defaults that categorize anything that comes from a listserv as junk. This appears to be the case with both Apple Mail and Outlook, for example (or maybe it’s
a default of the U at Buffalo mail server). <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">If this is happening to you, there should be a setting somewhere where you can invoke a safe domain exception. So for example, I entered “<a href="http://linguistlist.org" target="_blank">linguistlist.org</a>” in my safe domains list, and that has taken care
of LingTyp messages going to spam/junk. <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">(Ridiculously, I actually also had to enter “<a href="http://buffalo.edu" target="_blank">buffalo.edu</a>” as a safe domain. My own messages to UB listservs were getting junk-labeled
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Apple Color Emoji"">😡</span><span style="font-size:11pt">)<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">(Incidentally, it took me a while to figure out that I could only make these setting changes online, not in the local app on my computer. That too might be a local quirk of the UB system, but one which is
very likely replicated elsewhere.)<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">Best -- Juergen<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127 <br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: </span><span style="font-size:11pt"><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:rgb(0,120,212)">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><span style="font-size:11pt"><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:rgb(5,99,193)">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;color:black">Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh) </span><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) </span><span style="font-size:11pt"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt">-- <u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt" lang="RU"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt" lang="RU"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Arnold Zwicky <<a href="mailto:arnold.zwicky@gmail.com" target="_blank">arnold.zwicky@gmail.com</a>><br>
<b>Date: </b>Sunday, December 11, 2022 at 12:01 PM<br>
<b>To: </b>Ian Joo <<a href="mailto:I.Joo@tilburguniversity.edu" target="_blank">I.Joo@tilburguniversity.edu</a>><br>
<b>Cc: </b>Linguistic Typology <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Lingtyp] Lingtyp mails classified as spams?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt"><br>
<br>
> On Dec 10, 2022, at 9:41 PM, Ian Joo <<a href="mailto:I.Joo@tilburguniversity.edu" target="_blank">I.Joo@tilburguniversity.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
> <br>
> Dear all,<br>
> <br>
> is it just me or are the lingtyp mails keep on getting classified as spams?<br>
> I’m trying to change the settings of my e-mail to not detect them as spams but the mails inevitably end up in spam folder.<br>
> Is it just my problem or is anyone else having the same issue?<br>
<br>
This has been happening to me on both of the e-mail servers I use (<a href="http://gmail.com" target="_blank">gmail.com</a> and <a href="http://stanford.edu" target="_blank">stanford.edu</a>). Originally, about a quarter of the mail to Lingtyp (I *think* just the mailings of calls for papers, open positions, conference programs, and the like) were shunted
to my junk mailbox. I then had to move them to my inbox -- training the bot not to junk them in the first place -- and then delete them there after I'd read them. Things have gradually improved, but some Lingtyp mailings still get sent there. I don't know
know what the bots are detecting, but the behavior is very annoying.<br>
<br>
Arnold<br>
<br>
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