[ADMIN] Welcome to news.admin.net-abuse.policy!
Tim Skirvin
Posting-Frequency: twice monthly
Last-modified: 2004/01/11
Version: 1.0
URL: http://www.killfile.org/faqs/nanap.html
news.admin.net-abuse.policy (NANAP) is a newsgroup for discussion of
policy regarding abuse of shared networks, or 'net-abuse'. It is a
robo-moderated forum, controlled by a moderation 'bot that automatically
approves anything that it thinks is an on-topic post.
HOW TO POST
===========
(This section assumes that you already know how to post to Usenet
newsgroups in general.)
As NANAP is a robomoderated forum, all messages must pass through the
moderation bot before they hit the network. Things that must be true for
the message to be approved:
o The message must have a subject tag, or some text inside a pair
of square brackets at the beginning of the subject line. This can
be anything, but should be something that indicates what the post
is going to be about in general. Sample valid subject lines:
[ADMIN] Welcome to news.admin.net-abuse.policy!
Re: [ADMIN] Is this group still on?
[email] About that new spam bill...
[AIM] AOL to start selling usernames to spammers!
[usenet] Posting binaries to comp.binaries.*
Sample Invalid:
(ADMIN) Welcome to news.admin.net-abuse.policy!
{ADMIN} Is this group still on?
Where do I put this tag? [Here?]
For reference, the perl to look this is:
my $tag = $subject =~ m%^\s*(?:Re:\s*)?\[(.*)\].*%;
o The message must not be a binary, or formatted in HTML. It should
be formatted in standard, ASCII-formatted text (or whatever Usenet
turns into over the years).
o The message must have less than 70% quoted text.
o The message must not be clearly off-topic or abusive. This is
accomplished through basic pattern matching on the headers or body
of the message, and is only implemented when there is a problem.
If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
notices will not arrive if the return address is faked; as such, use of
spamblocked addresses is discouraged.
WHAT TO POST
============
Anything regarding actual abuse of a shared public network such as the
Internet, Usenet, IRC, AIM, or other similar networks is on-topic in
NANAP. This includes spam of all sorts, mailbombings, system security,
legal workings as regards to abuse, blocklisting, and anything that would
be on-topic anywhere in the news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy,
What is not on-topic is discussion of abuse *on* the net, except in as
much as it relates to abuse *of* the net, such as flamewars and off-topic
posts. Specifically, ongoing personal fights and flamewars from other
groups will not be allowed in NANAP.
ORIGINAL CHARTER
================
The following charter was set down in 1996, when the group was created.
Remarkably, it is still essentially correct.
News.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum for discussion of
policy and site-management issues related to net abuse. Possible
topics include Acceptable Use Policies, what actions should be taken
against abusers, discussion of third-party cancel messages, possible
actions against abusive sites such as rogue site declarations,
discussion of what is and is not net abuse, and so forth.
News.admin.net-abuse.policy is a moderated forum. The robomoderator
of the group will disallow any and all crossposted messages, message
spews, binary messages, and any possible attacks on the group as
required. Dave the Resurrector (or a similar program) will be run on
the group, forged approvals will be automatically cancelled, and other
programs may be used as circumstances require.
News.admin.net-abuse.policy is moderated by a robot moderator, run by
a team of operators. The robot will automatically approve and post
messages that:
o Are not crossposted.
o Contain only text formatted for <78 columns, excepting quoted
material.
o Cannot be determined to directly violate the charter of the group
by the robot moderator alone (for which the criterion will be
published.)
Messages not approved by the robot moderator will be sent back to the
sender with a copy of the charter, though at most one copy of the
information will be sent per week. Changes to the robot moderator can
only be enacted by a majority vote of the then-current operators;
similarly, operators can be added or removed by a majority vote of the
then-current operators.
The news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy is for discussion of abuse of
Usenet and/or the Internet; it is not for discussion of abuse of groups
or individuals on such networks, such as flames, personal attacks, or
off-topic messages.
Binaries are specifically prohibited from all groups in the
news.admin.* hierarchy, except as examples of other abuse. 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. Spams, gateway
spews, and other attacks on the system itself will be removed as
appropriate, following standard Usenet guidelines.
There have been some changes to the effective charter of the group through
the years.
CURRENT MODERATION INFORMATION
==============================
NANAP is run by 'Elemental', a Verimod moderation bot written by Tim
Skirvin back in 1996-97 and operated on killfile.org. While venerable,
the bot still works years later.
All posts that go through the moderation 'bot are signed with pgpmoose.
If a post does not have a cryptographically sound X-Auth header, then the
post was not approved by Elemental, and will be shortly cancelled by
another bot.
Tim Skirvin is currently the moderator of NANAP.
Moderator: tski...@killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Admin Contact Address: nana...@ravenna.com
Article Submission Address: nana...@ravenna.com
Archives are available through groups.google.com. Tim has also written a
public web interface to the group, available at:
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
--
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/nana/ news.admin.net-abuse.*
Frank Slootweg
[...]
> If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
> approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
> then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
> notices will not arrive if the return address is faked; as such, use of
> spamblocked addresses is discouraged.
Has (the implementation of) this changed 'recently'?
The bot used to send approval/rejection notices to a Reply-To:
address, but it does not seem to do so anymore, at least I don't get
any.
So far it hasn't been a problem, because my messages got approved and
appear in the group, but if there would be a rejection, it would be nice
to get a rejection notice.
Tim Skirvin
> Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org> wrote:
> [...]
>> If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
>> approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
>> then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
>> notices will not arrive if the return address is faked; as such, use of
>> spamblocked addresses is discouraged.
> Has (the implementation of) this changed 'recently'?
We've been using new software since, umm, March. I don't think
anything's changed past that.
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
Moderator, much of news.admin.net-abuse.*
--
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/nana/ news.admin.net-abuse.*
http://www.killfile.org/donations.html killfile.org donations
Frank Slootweg
> Frank Slootweg <th...@ddress.is.invalid> writes:
[...]
> > Has (the implementation of) this changed 'recently'?
>
> We've been using new software since, umm, March. I don't think
> anything's changed past that.
Does it 'still' [1] send approval/rejection notices to a Reply-To
address? If so, could you please check if my approval notices are in
your mail logs?
[1] My last approval/rejection notices are of October *last* year, i.e.
*before* the new software.
Tim Skirvin
>> We've been using new software since, umm, March. I don't think
>> anything's changed past that.
> Does it 'still' [1] send approval/rejection notices to a Reply-To
> address? If so, could you please check if my approval notices are in
> your mail logs?
*checks some more*
Aah, there's the bug! It was trying to send the message to the
'From' instead of the 'Reply-To'; then it spotted the '.invalid' and
didn't try to send. Should work now.
Frank Slootweg
On November 14, Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org> wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <th...@ddress.is.invalid> writes:
>
> >> We've been using new software since, umm, March. I don't think
> >> anything's changed past that.
>
> > Does it 'still' [1] send approval/rejection notices to a Reply-To
> > address? If so, could you please check if my approval notices are in
> > your mail logs?
>
> *checks some more*
>
> Aah, there's the bug! It was trying to send the message to the
> 'From' instead of the 'Reply-To'; then it spotted the '.invalid' and
> didn't try to send. Should work now.
Just FYI: It indeed does work now. Yesterday's post was my first since
November 14 and the approval notice was correctly sent to my 'Reply-To:'
address.
Tim Skirvin
HOW TO POST
===========
If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
notices will not arrive if the return address is faked; as such, use of
spamblocked addresses is discouraged.
WHAT TO POST