home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!news.killfile.org!not-for-mail
- From: tskirvin@killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
- Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins,news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.net-abuse.sightings,news.admin.net-abuse.misc,news.answers
- Subject: Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions, Part 4/4 (v1.75)
- Supersedes: <cancelfaq20030915050002$5d6f@news.killfile.org>
- Followup-To: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
- Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 00:00:02 -0500
- Organization: Killfiles, Unlimited
- Lines: 319
- Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu
- Expires: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 05:00:02 GMT
- Message-ID: <cancelfaq20040515050002$3c7d@news.killfile.org>
- Reply-To: tskirvin@killfile.org
- X-Trace: victor.killfile.org 1084597205 26755 216.43.25.138 (15 May 2004 05:00:05 GMT)
- X-Complaints-To: usenet@killfile.org
- Summary: This is a list of Frequently Asked Question about cancel messages
- on Usenet. It mainly discusses how cancels work, who issues
- them, their history, and what to do about them. It is more of
- a general purpose FAQ than anything else; it's not required
- reading anywhere, just more of a reference.
- X-Auth: PGPMoose V1.1 PGP news.admin.net-abuse.sightings
- iD8DBQFApaPSv1i8LqUfqQURAkgyAJ0YGFmbfsf+ZlUP91mps3S+FnaSsACfWhTf
- 1/ooS8t6d800IoQkqoicLvk=
- =FNvN
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins:34806 news.admin.net-abuse.usenet:610097 news.admin.net-abuse.sightings:1406498 news.admin.net-abuse.misc:222753 news.answers:271284
-
- Archive-name: usenet/cancel-faq/appendix
- Posting-Frequency: monthly
- Last-modified: 1999/09/30
- Version: 1.75
- URL: <URL:http://www.killfile.org/faqs/cancel.html>
-
- Cancel Messages
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Part 4/4
-
- This document contains information about cancel messages on Usenet, such
- as who is allowed to use them, how they operate, what to do if your
- message is cancelled, and the like. It does not contain detailed
- instructions on how to cancel a third party's posts. It is not intended
- to be a fully technical document; its audience is the average Usenet user,
- up to a mid-level administrator.
-
- This document is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation of Usenet
- protocols, or of Usenet itself, but a basic knowledge of these concepts
- is assumed. Please refer to news.announce.newusers, RFC1036, and/or
- RFC1036bis if you wish to learn them.
-
- Disclaimers: The information contained within is potentially hazardous;
- applying it without the permission of your news administrator may cause
- the revocation of your account, civil action against you, and even the
- possibility of criminal lawsuits. The author of this document is in no
- way liable for misuse of the information contained within, nor is he in
- any way responsible for damages related to the use or accuracy of the
- information. Proceed at your own risk.
-
-
- Table of Contents > = In other parts of the FAQ
- ================= * = Changed since last update
- >I. What are cancel messages?
- >II. How do cancels work?
- >III. So your post was cancelled...
- >IV. What does it take to cancel messages?
- >V. That idiot forge-cancelled my posts!
- >VI. What moral issues are involved with cancel messages?
- >VII. What's going to happen to cancels in the future?
- >VIII. What about these other things?
- >IX. What are the current cancel issues?
-
- >Changes
- >To Do
- >Contributors
- >Pointers
-
- Appendix A: Dave the Resurrector
- 1. What is Dave the Resurrector?
- 2. Why is Dave necessary?
- 3. What cancels are authorized?
- 4. What messages are reposted?
- 5. What is the format of the reposts?
- 6. So how do I cancel my own posts when Dave is around?
- 7. What about other Resurrector bots?
-
- Appendix B: Retromoderation
- 1. What is retromoderation?
- 2. Why is retromoderation so popular?
- 3. What's wrong with retromoderation?
- 4. When is retromoderation alright?
-
-
- Appendix A: Dave the Resurrector
- ================================
-
- 1. What is Dave the Resurrector?
-
- Dave the Resurrector is a program written and run by Chris Lewis
- (clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca) that reports on and reposts messages cancelled
- in the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy. Dave's code was written after a
- particularly obnoxious run of cancels in news.admin.net-abuse.misc sent
- by Kevin Lipsitz (since charged with fraud and other offenses); the name
- was suggested by Tim Skirvin, and Chris accepted the name in honor of
- Dave Hayes, of news.admin.* fame.
-
- Dave's reposting activities are occasionally extended to include
- the rest of news.* and other hierarchies, to resurrect messages removed by
- large-scale rogue cancellers. From time to time Dave's presence has also
- been requested in other newsgroups.
-
-
- 2. Why is Dave necessary?
-
- The news.admin.* hierarchy has always been the target of massive
- forged cancel attacks, (see section V.D. for details). Dave neutralizes
- these attacks, though at the cost of allowing people to cancel their own
- posts effectively.
-
-
- 3. What cancels are authorized?
-
- In the context of Dave, an "unauthorized cancel" is a cancel by
- someone other than the originator, the originator's system administration,
- the moderator of the group, or an accepted spam canceller. Of necessity,
- given the ease in which cancels can be forged, Dave cannot determine the
- authenticity of cancels per-se, so will resurrect all cancelled articles
- except those which:
-
- o are cancelled by an accepted spam canceller, or
- o contain a "X-No-Repost: yes" header, or
- o are deemed by Dave to be unsafe to resurrect - where "unsafe"
- is determined at the discretion of Dave's operator.
-
- Dave's operator routinely scans Dave's normal haunts, and will
- manually recancel articles that appear to have been resurrected in
- error. Other spam cancellers who've been introduced to Dave can do this
- as well.
-
- When Dave is armed to cope with a rogue canceller cancelling in
- other groups, a best-effort attempt will be made to avoid reposting spam
- and other postings that are undesirable to resurrect.
-
-
- 4. What messages are reposted?
-
- According to the news.admin.net-abuse.* charters, "All messages
- removed by unauthorized cancels in the hierarchy will be automatically
- reposted by Dave the Resurrector or a similar program, at the discretion
- of the group moderator or, for the unmoderated groups, the operator of
- the resurrector program."
-
- Every cancel message in the news.admin.* hierarchy prompts Dave to
- create a repost of the original message; however, not every repost is
- injected into the news system. Before Dave submits an article to be
- reposted, the bot runs a few extra checks:
-
- o If there have been more than n reposts this "run" (the amount of
- time since Dave was started, which is usually several days), do not
- submit the repost. As of the the time this section was written,
- "n" was 30; this number is, of course, subject to change.
- o If the original is more than n days old, do not submit the repost.
- "n" was 4 as of the time this section was written, and is again
- subject to change.
- o If the cancel was from an authorized spam canceller, as determined
- by Dave's operator, do not submit the repost.
- o If the article is unsafe to resurrect (for technical or other
- reasons), do not submit the repost.
-
- If the circumstances warrant it, some or all of these heuristics
- may be turned off - for instance, the maximum reposts per run section may
- be taken out to stop a massive forged-cancel bomb. Also, all articles not
- submitted by Dave are still subject to later perusal (and possible
- posting) by Dave's operator, as he sees fit.
-
-
- 5. What is the format of the reposts?
-
- In the past, Dave modified the body and headers of the message to
- allow for easy notice of rogue cancels. It was eventually pointed out,
- however, that this policy broke PGP signatures (VII.E.) and the pseudo-
- headers used by FAQ maintainers; to solve this, Dave's policy has been
- changed to 'least-disturbance'. As such, reposts of cancelled messages
- are as similar to the original message as possible:
-
- o The original Path and Message-ID are renamed to X-Path and X-
- Message-ID (respectively).
- o A series of X-Comment headers, including 'X-Comment: DtR repost:"
- are added, to explain that the message is a repost.
- o The Message-ID of the repost consists of the original Message-ID
- with a prepended "REPOST.<random number>". It should be noted
- that this change, while necessary, does break PGP-signed control
- messages and is not compatible with PGPMoose.
- o The Path of the article is set to 'ferret.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector'
- (at injection). The Path may also include the site responsible
- for the cancel, which helps break cancel-repost loops if a rogue
- canceller tries to cancel the reposts and allows other sites to
- alias out the cancelling site and ignore the reposts if they wish.
- o At present, 'REPOST: ' is prepended to the Subject line of all
- reposted articles; this is likely to change in the near future.
- o The Newsgroups header is trimmed to only include news.admin.*
- groups, so as to prevent cancel-repost wars with policy-enforcement
- bots in other groups (ie groups such as foo.general will be removed
- from the Newsgroups: header, even if it was present in the original
- article). This has the side benefit of stopping people from using
- Dave to "protect" their cross-posted flamewars by including a news.
- admin.* group.
- o The body is posted intact, with the cancel message that trigged Dave
- appended at the end of the message.
- o All other headers are left intact.
-
-
- 6. So how do I cancel my own posts when Dave is around?
-
- If it were possible, Dave would let you cancel any article that
- you wrote without a repost; however, due to the practical problem of
- cancels being trivially easy to forge, this can't happen without removing
- Dave's use. As such, Dave errs on the side of caution, and reposts most
- articles it sees cancels for. However, there are ways around Dave, if you
- really want to cancel your posts.
-
- o The presence of an 'X-No-Archive: yes' header will prevent Dave
- from reposting your article (excepting attacks by targeted rogue
- cancellers); see your newsreader's manual for instructions on how
- to automatically add this header to your messages.
-
- o If you cancel or supersede your article soon enough after the
- original posting, you _may_ be able to remove the message before
- a copy is saved by Dave. Of course, it should be noted that
- cancel messare are rarely going to be fast enough to keep anybody
- from reading the message anyway.
-
- Mail to Dave's operator is not encouraged when a cancel is
- required; even in the case of forgeries in your name, a post to the proper
- news.admin.* group indicating that the messages are forged will do more
- good.
-
-
- 7. What about other Resurrector bots?
-
- As previously noted, DtR can be extended to other newsgroups and
- hierarchies by request. Astute observes might note that the
- news.admin.net-abuse.* charters allow for other Resurrector bots if the
- situation warrants it. This was done on purpose, to allow for a
- replacement for Dave if necessary. At this time, however, no other
- Resurrector bots seem to be necessary.
-
-
-
-
- Appendix B: Retromoderation
- ===========================
- 1. What is retromoderation?
-
- Technically, retromoderation is moderation that takes place after
- the messages are posted. All posts are initially distributed normally,
- either through standard Usenet channels or through a simple mail-to-news
- gateway; the moderator later checks the group, and deletes those messages
- that were inappropriate.
-
-
- 2. Why is retromoderation so popular?
-
- In a normally moderated newsgroup, the combination of a simple
- moderator-bot and retromoderation allows for focused and on-topic discussions
- and keeps the group (mostly) spam-free, all while not requiring large
- workloads for a moderator and allowing message distribution to be kept
- high. In an otherwise unmoderated newsgroup, retromoderation allows for
- some level of topic and spam control, while not forcing the centralization
- required by standard moderation and not requiring a formal moderation
- process.
-
- In short, retromoderation is a quick and easy way of accomplishing
- most of the benefits of standard moderation, and people appreciate this.
-
-
- 3. What's wrong with retromoderation?
-
- Though it may be tempting, retromoderation should never be entered
- into lightly. It is plagued with problems, affecting everything from its
- effectiveness to the long-term future of Usenet.
-
-
- o Retromoderation does allow for messages deemed inappropriate by
- the moderator to be displayed for a time. This defeats the purpose
- of the moderation in many cases, such as high-speed 'announce' news-
- groups or groups for school-aged children.
-
- o Retromoderation is not 100% effective. Not all sites honor cancel
- messages, and even less honor NoCeMs; as a result, it may not be
- possible to delete a message after it has been posted.
-
- o While all news software recognizes the difference between a moderated
- and an unmoderated newsgroup, there is no way to tell from software
- whether a group is retromoderated; as such, there is no official way
- to indicate whether a group is retromoderated or not, nor to tell
- who is the moderator or moderators. Similarly, there is no official
- way to make an otherwise unmoderated newsgroup retromoderated.
-
- o Most reasonable people will understand if their messages are never
- posted; the concept is fairly apparently to most of the population
- due to past experiences with newspaper and magazine editors and
- their ilk, and few consider it censorship. This is less true when
- an article is posted and subsequently deleted.
-
- o News administrators rarely want to deal with the specifics of Usenet
- news, especially in regards to cancel messages. As such, many news
- admins will delete a retromoderated newsgroup and/or disable cancel
- messages on their servers, rather than worry about the issues
- involved with the retromoderation.
-
- o Retromoderation in an otherwise unmoderated newsgroup gives credence
- to those that would like to cancel messages that they merely don't
- like on Usenet as a whole.
-
-
- 4. When is retromoderation alright?
-
- Even though retromoderation has its problems, it is still widely
- accepted and used in several circumstances.
-
- o Retromoderation is not questioned in already moderated newsgroups if
- performed by the group moderator or those who they designate. Mod-
- erated Big-8 newsgroups, alt.* groups accepted as moderated by 80%+
- of Usenet sites, and private hierarchies may all be retro-moderated
- by their respective moderators or controllers.
-
- o Spam-trap groups, such as alt.sex.cancel, are specifically chartered
- so that any message crossposted to them is considered fair game for
- cancellation. This form of retromoderation is considered mostly
- legitimate, so long as the newsgroup name makes clear that the group
- is moderated.
-
- o As only those sites that explicitly want to follow the moderation will
- have to do so, any individual can retromoderate any newsgroup that
- they choose using NoCeM rather than cancel messages.
-
- o Although still hotly contested, there is a movement to allow robot
- keyword retromoderation of alt.* groups, in which any post not
- containing a key word or phrase, decided upon by the group, is
- automatically cancelled. Keyword retromod was invented by Dick
- Depew (red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us) and is currently being used on
- several newsgroups, such as alt.sex.cthulhu. This form of retromod
- is considered radical, and (in the opinion of this author) shouldn't
- be done; standard moderation is probably a better answer.
- --
- Copyright 1999, Tim Skirvin. All rights reserved.
- <URL:http://www.killfile.org/faqs/cancel.html>
-