"Mr. Potatohead" <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> Anyone know what slcsquared's real name is?
If anyone gets this information, I suggest forwarding it to Judges-L,
which is developing a database of spammers and information on sites
that are responding to spamming (in)appropriately.
Spamming of lists in beyond the scope of Judges-L, for the moment,
but sharing of data would certainly be helpful.
So, I am enclosing the FAQ for informational purposes,
and since we just completed it, comments are welcome for the next
version.
dss
==========================================================
Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Ver. 1.0
---------------------------------------------------------
Summary:
You can protect your reputation as a information source by
cancelling articles posted under your name as soon as you
discover that they are erroneous.
Cancelling other's articles, however, can expose you, your
site, and the Net as a whole to serious threats. The sender
should be notified when articles need to be cancelled.
Disputes or doubtful cases can be directed to the Judges'
List for resolution.
---------------------------------------------------------
List of Frequently Asked Questions
What are cancel messages?
How have cancel messages been used?
When should I issue a cancel message?
When should I not issue a cancel message?
What should I do when in doubt about whether a
cancel is appropriate?
What should I do if I receive a request to
cancel one of my own messages?
How can I request that a message be cancelled
when I can not do so myself?
What should I do if I suspect one of my
posts has been improperly cancelled?
Why should I follow these guidelines?
---------------------------------------------------------
What are cancel messages?
Cancel messages are special USENET messages from a class
known as "Control" messages. Control messages don't result
in postings for people to read, instead they give
instructions to the USENET server software at each site that
gets the message. A Cancel message is a control message that
indicates that a particular message (named through its unique
Message-ID) should be deleted.
How have cancel messages been used?
Most commonly they are used when a person posts something
they want to delete, correct, or retract. One can cancel an
old message and optionally issue a new one. (There is a
better way to cancel and re-issue called Superseding, but
most user programs do not support it.)
Cancels are sometimes used by moderators of moderated
newsgroups to delete the messages of people who bypassed the
moderator, or messages that the moderator later learns should
not have been posted.
When should I issue a cancel message?
You should issue a cancel message if it becomes necessary to
delete, correct, or retract one of your own posts.
You can issue a cancel message to delete a forgery: A message
posted by someone else, that appears to be from you. A
forgery can often be cancelled by you as if it were your own
article. Some victims of forgeries don't cancel them, but
consider it sufficient to post disclaimers to the affected
newsgroups alerting everyone to the forgery. This is wise, in
any case, since the forged message is likely to be seen by
many people, even if it is cancelled.
If you are a moderator, you can cancel a post that has a
forged approval header or which was incorrectly posted to
your newsgroup.
When should I not issue a cancel message?
It is not appropriate to cancel an article posted by someone
else. However, a forgery is an exception. Such cancels should
be reported to the Judges' List (see below).
A low-tech form of "forgery" is to insert fabricated quotes
in an article. Such posts should be followed-up with a
correction and the poster notified. Misattribution of
quotations, as opposed to fabrication, is often a result of
inferior news reading software.
It is inappropriate to cancel someone else's writing simply
because you find the opinions expressed offensive. You can,
however, ask the author to cancel the offensive post. Your
news reading software should permit you to enter the names of
offensive posters in a "kill" file, then you will not see
articles from that person in the future. Ask your
administrator to upgrade your software if you do not have
this capability.
The poster should be asked to cancel a chain letter or a
libelous article, or any other post, such as an advertisement
or pyramid scheme, that has inappropriate content. A copy of
the request should be directed to the postmaster at the
originating site, if the content is unlawful.
What should I do when in doubt about whether a cancel
is appropriate?
Unless you are certain the poster is acting in bad faith, you
should explain to the poster why you object to the post and
ask that it be deleted. State that you are considering
submitting a complaint to the Judges' List and explain how
one can participate in the dispute resolution process (see
below). You may explain how the offending post, or a post
that accomplishes the same objective, can be broadcast. One
source of information is a list of Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ), "How to find the right place to post (FAQ)" in the
newsgroup "news.newusers.questions".
If the post comes from your site, contact your postmaster or
news administrator for an opinion about whether the article
violates the site usage agreement.
Doubtful cases can be submitted to the Judges' List, for an
opinion.
A complaint to the Judges' List must include a:
:complete copy of the offending post.
:complete copy of your letter to the poster, requesting
that the post be cancelled.
: complete copy of any reply from the poster or a news
administrator.
The complaint must have a subject line that starts with the
characters "COMPLAINT: ", followed by the subject of the
offending post.
If you receive additional information after submitting a
complaint or wish to withdraw the complaint, the same subject
line should be used.
Mail the complaint to [log in to unmask] or
[log in to unmask]
If you wish to participate in the discussion of the
complaint, email to [log in to unmask] or
[log in to unmask] with only the command:
SUB JUDGES-L <your-name-here>
in the message body. Replace the <your-name-here>, with your
first and last name, in the above command.
Wait for someone to respond to your complaint, before making
comments on the List. If there is no response within a week,
it is most likely that you did not file a satisfactory
complaint (see above). If you find no error in your complaint
and the problem still has not been resolved, send an
additional message asking for help.
What should I do if I receive a request to cancel one of
my own messages?
If you do not agree that the request is valid, reply to the
request with your reasons for not cancelling. If the request
does not mention the Judges' List, refer to this FAQ and ask
that you be notified if a complaint is submitted.
How can I request that a message be cancelled when I can
not do so myself?
If your software does not permit cancellation, or you are not
confident in using it, ask your administrator to issue a
cancel message for you.
What should I do if I suspect one of my posts has been
improperly cancelled?
If you suspect that your post has been improperly cancelled,
contact your News administrator to rule out the possibility
of a technical failure. If there has been an improper cancel,
complete documentation should be directed to the Judges'
List. Follow the procedures for submitting a complaint, but
replace the characters "COMPLAINT: " with "CANCEL: ".
Why should I follow these guidelines?
If you do not cancel erroneous articles that you have posted,
you waste readers' time and damage your own reputation as a
reliable source. Consider an article posted to a typical
newsgroup with 36,000 readers, a post that takes an average
of 1 second for each reader to deal with (i. e., examining
the subject line) uses a total of ten hours (36,000 seconds
/ 3,600 seconds/hour = 10 hours). If the article uses up an
average of four seconds, then the total time expenditure is
40 hours, the equivalent of a work week. This is probably the
minimum time expenditure on any article that is even selected
for scanning. Thus, a few minutes spent cancelling an article
can save a lot of time for readers. Groups with a lot of
erroneous articles tend to loose readers, and articles posted
to those groups reach a limited audience. By cancelling
erroneous posts, you also reduce the risk that your name will
be entered in numerous kill files, thus limiting the audience
you can reach with your posts. Posting of apologies for
faulty articles, such as those with an empty body, is to be
avoided, since this wastes even more time of the reader,
without supplying useful information.
If you abuse the cancel facility, by cancelling other's
articles you force people to take defensive actions. Many
administrators have disabled cancels, because they have been
abused. The disabling of cancels means that you will not be
able to delete all copies of your own posts. Therefore, if
you cancel an erroneous article and then post a corrected
one, readers at certain sites will first see the erroneous
one and then the corrected one. They may think that the
corrected one is a duplicate and not read it. This situation
is obviously of no benefit to posters or readers. If your
site administrator has disabled cancels, it is wise for you
to notify your administrator when you issue a cancel, so at
least it can be deleted at your site.
Disabling of cancels does not prevent a cancel from working
at all, since the cancel message can delete the cancelled
article before it gets to a site where cancels are disabled.
Therefore, a cancel will be most effective if it is issued
immediately after the target article is posted. In some
cases, robot posters have been used to immediately repost
articles that have been cancelled. This can rapidly lead to a
newsgroup being overloaded at a site where the cancel
facility has been disabled. This type of conflict situation
should be avoided, since it makes the newsgroup unusable for
most readers. Cancel messages must be used with extreme care.
If you cancel articles based upon their content, you expose
your site to a legal risk, since it can then be argued that
you are taking responsibility for all articles' content, some
of which may violate copyright or pornography laws, for
example. Originating sites already are exposed to this risk,
therefore, they should be allowed to cancel such posts. They
should also have a user agreement that permits them to
discipline a user, thus ensuring that repeated postings of
this type do not occur, and thereby reducing the legal risk
at all News sites.
This is not a hypothetical risk. Many sites have been closed
down, had their equipment seized, and their operators
prosecuted, and in some cases jailed. The effectiveness of a
common carrier or "bookstore" type of defense has yet to be
established. The use of non-originating site cancels to
control content of articles, reduces the chances that such a
defense can ever be established. This could make the risk of
operating a News site unacceptable. Some sites have already
been prohibited from operating moderated newsgroups or mail
lists by their legal council, because of the legal risk
associated with assuming responsibility for content of
distributed messages. The damage to USENET caused by the most
extreme case of abusive posting was much less than that
caused by external threats, even when those threats did not
directly result in disruption of a News site. Therefore, in
doubtful cases, cancel messages should not be issued.
Notification of authorities external to the Net should be
avoided. Contacts to the Press should be left to those who
have been trained in public relations or have equivalent
experience.
In order to minimize legal liability, you should in, first
instance, try to stop abusive posting at the source. By
objecting directly to a poster of offensive material and
making the person aware of this FAQ, you reduce the chances
of repeated abuse.
In the case, that a poster refuses to comply with a request
to cancel an article and you refer the matter to the Judges'
List, the conflict can be resolved in a way which benefits
the Net in the long term and reduces the risk that you will
be subject to retaliation, for example, by having your posts
improperly cancelled. Complaints to the Judges' List also
permits a database of repeat abusers to be built up, with
much more effective resolution of such cases then becoming
possible.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sample reply to a poster requesting cancellation or
explanation (not usable in cases where only the opinions
expressed are offensive):
-------------------------
I object to your post, because .....
Please cancel this post and notify me that you have done so,
or explain why you will not delete the post.
If I get no response, I will submit a complaint to the
Judges' List.
If you wish to participate in the discussion of the complaint
on that list, email to [log in to unmask] or
[log in to unmask] with only the command:
SUB JUDGES-L <your-name-here>
in the message body. Replace the <your-name-here>, with your
first and last name, in the above command.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Contributors to this FAQ include:
Tim Pierce <[log in to unmask]>
David Stodolsky <[log in to unmask]>
Dimitri Vulis <[log in to unmask]
==================================================================
David S. Stodolsky, PhD Internet: [log in to unmask]
Tornskadestien 2, st. th. (C) Tel.: + 45 38 33 03 30
DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark Fax: + 45 38 33 88 80
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