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From: ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson)
Newsgroups: net.news.b,net.news.group
Subject: Re: How to deal with net.general
Message-ID: <5209@elsie.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 13:43:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: elsie.5209
Posted: Sat Aug 24 13:43:10 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Aug-85 00:42:02 EDT
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Organization: NIH-LEC, Bethesda, MD
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Xref: watmath net.news.b:1179 net.news.group:3512

The proposal on the floor:
allow anyone to cancel any article posted to "net.general."

> . . .some users would enjoy cancelling articles just for the fun of it.
> But restricting this to the news suser() could make this a useful function.
> Comments?

> Sounds like a good idea... I wouldn't mind having that power, however
> terrified I would be about using it.

Sorry. . .if you want only responsible users to cancel articles, limiting the
power to suser()s doesn't work.  Some suser()s are irresponsible; some
responsible users aren't suser()s.

> Takes just one crackpot (any volunteers? I will... (-:) to kill net.general
> articles this way.

1.  Crackpots can already kill net.general articles (using forgery techniques).
2.  It's also true that crackpots can currently POST articles; should we
    therefore not allow anyone at all to post articles?
3.  Currently, the bulk of the energy of network crackpots goes into posting
    articles; the effects of the crackpots' work is to increase both phone bills
    and the amount of time it takes folks to get through news groups.  I for one
    would be happy to channel crackpot energies into article cancellation, since
    this would REDUCE phone bills and junk news.

> If you added a "Cancel-Votes:" header (just what we need, more
> per-article overhead, right?), everytime somebody tried to cancel the
> article, you just bump up the vote count; when it reaches a threshold, you
> blow the article away all-together.

Nah. . .some crackpot would simply post multiple cancellations.

> Brilliant! I second!!

Well. . .finally an opinion I can agree with 100%.  :-)

Given the reluctance to give "anyone" the power to cancel articles, perhaps
each site might maintain a list of "wise guys" whose cancellations of
"net.general" articles would be heeded.  A back-door way to do this would be
to have an entry in the "/usr/lib/news/sys" file of the form:
	wiseguys:!all::mark@cbosgd.UUCP,root@all,!all@all.ARPA
The poster of the cancellation of a "net.general" article could be "ngmatch"ed
against the "wiseguys" list to determine whether or not to accept the
cancellation.  Cleaner implementations are, of course, possible.
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