sporgery

English

Etymology

Blend of spam +‎ forgery; coined by Tilman Hausherr

Noun

sporgery (countable and uncountable, plural sporgeries)

1. (Internet) The disruptive act of posting a flood of articles to a newsgroup, the article headers having been falsified so as to make the articles appear to have been posted by people other than the true poster.
   • 1999 May 6, Kevin Poulsen, “Attack of the Robotic Poets”, in ZDnet:

     Since February the poetry-bot has dominated the discussions, forging the names of legitimate human posters and blindly countering every argument-- pro or con-- with such succinct rebuttals as "Above no cough at no writer every considerate profit addressed," and mind-bending riddles like "Why is another horseman either cytoplasm enchantingly?" Usenet defenders are countering the assault with automation of their own, crafting programs that kill the "sporgeries" -- a term coined by ARS's Tilman Hausherr "because it's both spam, and forgery."

   • 1999 September 16, Daniel Rutter, “Gibbering clones the future of Usenet?”, in Australian IT‎^[1]:

     Nobody's going to mistake any of the fakes for the real you once they hear a few words, of course, but there's no easy way for them to tell which is which without listening to them all in turn. Which means, in all likelihood, that many of them will never find the real you. If it happens often enough, sooner or later everyone's going to just give up and go home, and newcomers will be both mystified and discouraged. This extraordinary state of affairs is happening right now on Usenet [and yes, it is to a first approximation still happening in late 2006], and it's called "sporge". Sporge is a neologism coined by German software developer Tilman Hausherr; it's a contraction of "spammed forgery". "Spam" is here used in its original meaning; not unsolicited commercial e-mail, but irrelevant or inappropriate messages posted to Usenet, which were annoying people - though far fewer people - long before Amazing Business Opportunities and come-ons for porn sites started routinely cluttering up e-mail in-boxes.

   • 2005, M. Hojsgaard, Religion and Cyberspace, Routledge, →ISBN, page 111:

     Tilman Hausherr, a daily contributor to alt.religion.scientology, coined the word 'sporgeries' (spam-forgeries), and promoted software to kill the unwelcome messages.

   • 2007, Michael Powell, Forbidden Knowledge: 101 Things NOT Everyone Should Know How to Do, Adams Media, →ISBN, page 252:

     Sporgery - This is the act of sending a flood of posts with fake article headers that make them appear to have been sent by other newsgroup regulars (the word is a composite of spam and forgery). It's a good way to discredit other users by making it seem like they are sending offensive posts.