Yeesh, bad night
Russ Allbery
At the current time (the posting time of this message), the spam filters
I've been testing are rejecting about half of our incoming news volume.
Looks like news2.acs.oakland.edu has a nasty spammer problem (the
FreeInternetAccess spammer), HeadHunter.NET just started another database
dump and promptly hit my filters in a big way, the nowhere.yet spammer is
back, the lookingglass.net spammer is active, and the fellow from sprynet
is still going (and has been for a good week).
And normally we only filter out 25% or so, and that's with very aggressive
crossposting filters.
Just in case someone *doesn't* think recruiter postings are a problem:
nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
1668
1,668 rejected articles from *one* site in the space of about three hours.
I'm seriously considering just rejecting anything with a HeadHunter.NET
message ID.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Russ Allbery
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> Just in case someone *doesn't* think recruiter postings are a problem:
> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
> 1668
> 1,668 rejected articles from *one* site in the space of about three
> hours. I'm seriously considering just rejecting anything with a
> HeadHunter.NET message ID.
15 minutes later:
nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
2622
Good lord. At what point does this qualify as a spew?
Russ Allbery
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>> 1668
> 15 minutes later:
> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
> 2622
15 minutes later:
nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
3791
70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
a flood. Sample headers follow:
Path: news.Stanford.EDU!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news-in-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!204.181.41.2!newsman.viper.net!not-for-mail
From: "FREE www.HeadHunter.NET" <pos...@HeadHunter.NET>
Newsgroups: misc.jobs,misc.jobs.contract,misc.jobs.contracts,misc.jobs.offered,jobs.offered,us.jobs,us.jobs.offered,us.jobs.offered.contract,va.jobs,alt.jobs,biz.jobs.offered
Subject: US-VA-Washington D.C. Lawson Consultant, CIBER INCORPORATED
Supersedes: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 05:21:42 -500
Organization: FREE www.HeadHunter.NET
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
Reply-To: MAX...@AOL.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.16.233.71
Xref: news.Stanford.EDU misc.jobs.contract:2507686 misc.jobs.offered:6113987
viper.net, did you know that your customer is doing this? Do you have any
justification for allowing them to continue?
Rebecca Ore
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>
> 70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
> a flood. Sample headers follow:
I find the jobs postings an interesting test case. There has
been an argument that if the despammers weren't issuing cancels, that
the rate of posting of sex ads would decline.
The jobs postings, which are generally not cancelled by
despammers, prove this is likely to be a fallacy.
--
Rebecca Ore
Henrietta K. Thomas
[emailed to ab...@viper.net, ne...@viper.net]
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on 28 Mar 1998 02:53:30 -0800, Russ Allbery
<r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>
>>> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>>> 1668
>
>> 15 minutes later:
>
>> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>> 2622
>
>15 minutes later:
>
>nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
> 3791
>
>70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
>a flood. Sample headers follow:
>
>Path: news.Stanford.EDU!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news-in-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!204.181.41.2!newsman.viper.net!not-for-mail
>From: "FREE www.HeadHunter.NET" <pos...@HeadHunter.NET>
>Newsgroups: misc.jobs,misc.jobs.contract,misc.jobs.contracts,misc.jobs.offered,jobs.offered,us.jobs,us.jobs.offered,us.jobs.offered.contract,va.jobs,alt.jobs,biz.jobs.offered
>Subject: US-VA-Washington D.C. Lawson Consultant, CIBER INCORPORATED
>Supersedes: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
>Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 05:21:42 -500
>Organization: FREE www.HeadHunter.NET
>Lines: 39
>Message-ID: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
>Reply-To: MAX...@AOL.COM
>NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.16.233.71
>Xref: news.Stanford.EDU misc.jobs.contract:2507686 misc.jobs.offered:6113987
>
>viper.net, did you know that your customer is doing this? Do you have any
>justification for allowing them to continue?
>
>--
>Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
To: viper.net
I note from the headers posted above that headhunter.NET is
posting to us.jobs, us.jobs.offered, us.jobs.offered.contract, and
biz.jobs.offered.
Please be advised that these newsgroups are no longer valid,
having been rmgrouped by the authorities for the us.* and biz.*
hierarchies due to the excess traffic produced by web-based
posting services such as headhunter.NET.
Please tell headhunter.NET to stop posting now, to cancel all
previous posts, and to keep their database on the web where
it belongs. The news administrators don't have room for this
stuff on their news servers.
Henrietta K. Thomas
us.* hierarchy coordinator
usa...@wwa.com
Dave Hayes
Rebecca Ore wrote:
> Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> > 70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
> > a flood. Sample headers follow:
> been an argument that if the despammers weren't issuing cancels, that
> the rate of posting of sex ads would decline.
In fact, I can confirm that this argument is believed by some spammers,
if not by you.
> The jobs postings, which are generally not cancelled by
> despammers, prove this is likely to be a fallacy.
There you go again, presuming One Standard For All.
Logically, this only disproves that mindset in this particular case.
It does not mean that the concept is a fallacy.
--
Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - da...@jetcafe.org
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<
Freedom Knight of Usenet - (NEW!) http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
Nasrudin found a weary falcon sitting one day on his window-sill. He'd never
seen a bird of this kind before. "You poor thing," he said, "how ever were
you allowed to get into this state?" He clipped the falcon's talons, cut its
beak straight, and trimmed its feathers. "Now you look more like a bird."
Brad Albom
Regarding ...
> Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
...
> 70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
> a flood. Sample headers follow:
I'm afraid I've gotta disagree a bit here. As a regular reader
and also as one of the volunteers who monitors SPAM & off-topic
postings in the misc.jobs.resumes newsgroup, I actually appreciate
the contributions from HeadHunter.NET.
There are two main reasons.
First, they are one of the few posters who actually follow the
misc.jobs charter guidelines for proper article formatting.
Specifically, the Subject: line includes consistent & accurate
information on the location of the candidate. This is in
distinct contrast with the other major poster to m.j.r,
virtualresume.com, who includes NO information about the
candidate's location. With Headhunter.NET I can easily
scan the subject lines to determine which resumes I want
to look at, whereas with virtualresume.com forces me to
download each of their resumes to figure this out.
For me, this is a major PAIN !
Second, and more important, I find that the postings from
Headhunter.NET tend to be much "fresher". The resumes posted
tend to be new people looking for work & its unusual for me to
find someone from a Headhunter.NET posting who's resume I seen
before. Again, this is in direct contrast to virtualresume.com
who seems to keep re-posting the same old resumes over and over
and over again for up to a year ! I know this because of the
original timestamps on resumes I previously saved from
virtualresume.com.
Bottom line is, I would like to encourage Headhunter.NET
to continue their good job of contributing to m.j.r.
Conversely, when virtualresume.com postings get to be too
volumous, I usually just skip them as they're much less
useful to a hiring manager.
JMHO,
-brad a.
P.S. I have no relation to either of these commercial services.
Mark L. Kahnt
>
> > 1668
>
> > hours. I'm seriously considering just rejecting anything with a
> > HeadHunter.NET message ID.
>
>
> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
> 2622
>
>
I staunchly consider that any job postings sent to local groups from any
of these database dumpers to be wildly off-topic (with the exception of
a handful that may be local or within reasonable commuting distance) and
when in volume, abusive. In my local *.jobs group, there are roughly 100
posts a day, of which at most a dozen this year were for jobs in the
local area - local posters were driven out.
I am of the opinion that only four groups for any particular job are
on-topic:
The local group for where the job is located.
A regional job group where the job is located.
Where the job warrants a broader search, the state/provincial or
national newsgroup for jobs.
Where a particularly wide search is warranted (Internet or programming
specialists), misc.jobs.
As soon as a job starts getting cross-posted or multi-posted to multiple
local groups, in my opinion it is being spammed, but then, my patience
is gone with these newsgroup flooders.
And 29,000+ is a spew - good excuse to block off their feed until they
can put together a sensible and netiquette respecting system that posted
their positions with reasonable cross-posts and focused attention.
Making one behave and at least draft a reasonable policy for working
with the Internet might have a positive influence on the competition,
too!
--
============================================================
To respond via e-mail - remove the "go-away-spammers"
portion of the Reply to: value.
Mark L. Kahnt, C.P. Box 1263, Kingston, Ontario K7L 4Y8
Voix: (613) 531-8767 Cellulaire: (613) 539-0935
Telecopieur: (613) 531-8684 Email: ka...@adan.kingston.net
References to "spam" in the above post refer to any of numerous
abuse of the Internet to repeatedly place off-topic messages in
inappropriate or unauthorised locations. The term should in no
way be construed as involving the products of Hormel Foods
Corporation.
Further, the use of the term "spam" should in no way be construed
to imply the support or involvement of Hormel Foods in conjunction
with such Internet abuse. Indeed, Hormel has publicly expressed
its disapproval of such actions.
SPAM is a registered trademark of Hormel Foods for luncheon meat
and is a damn fine product at that. The author of this signature
attachment has no legal, commercial or financial involvement with
Hormel; rather, is active in the fields of copyright, trademark,
and Internet abuse analysis.
Rex Tincher
Henrietta K. Thomas wrote:
<snip>
> Please tell headhunter.NET to stop posting now, to cancel all
> previous posts, and to keep their database on the web where
> it belongs. The news administrators don't have room for this
> stuff on their news servers.
Amen!
--
All opinions are mine and not those of my employer.
Russ Allbery
Brad Albom <"bradal@"@ibm.net> writes:
> I'm afraid I've gotta disagree a bit here. As a regular reader and also
> as one of the volunteers who monitors SPAM & off-topic postings in the
> misc.jobs.resumes newsgroup, I actually appreciate the contributions
> from HeadHunter.NET.
I don't.
> First, they are one of the few posters who actually follow the misc.jobs
> charter guidelines for proper article formatting.
I don't give a damn. Didn't you read my post? They are posting 10,000
articles *A DAY* to the *SAME NEWSGROUP*! I don't care if they're
announcing the second coming of Christ; this is *WAY* beyond the lines of
appropriateness and verging on a denial of service attack.
> Second, and more important, I find that the postings from Headhunter.NET
> tend to be much "fresher".
Go read them off the web. They'll be even fresher.
> Bottom line is, I would like to encourage Headhunter.NET to continue
> their good job of contributing to m.j.r.
Everything they post is in my spam filter and staying there. They can
find some other news server to abuse, and when (when, not if) the jobs
newsgroups to moderated, I hope the moderators will start bouncing their
posts. That way they can mailbomb their own news administrators and the
rest of us won't have to put up with this.
Fluffy
Rebecca Ore <rebec...@op.net> wrote:
: I find the jobs postings an interesting test case. There has
: been an argument that if the despammers weren't issuing cancels, that
: the rate of posting of sex ads would decline.
I doubt it would decline by very much, but it would probably level off.
: The jobs postings, which are generally not cancelled by
: despammers, prove this is likely to be a fallacy.
The job shops have adversaries of their own, the competitors they are
trying to outpost to remain visible in there. Ultimately, not a heck
of a lot is going to get better until more ISPs refuse to accept that
kind of volume. '441 Would you PLEASE cut the crap!' needs to be built
in at the posting end, and there's more than one way to get that to
happen now, without a lot of work.
Jeremy
Brad Albom <"bradal@"@ibm.net> wrote:
> I'm afraid I've gotta disagree a bit here. As a regular reader
> and also as one of the volunteers who monitors SPAM & off-topic
> postings in the misc.jobs.resumes newsgroup, I actually appreciate
> the contributions from HeadHunter.NET.
>
> There are two main reasons.
>
> First, they are one of the few posters who actually follow the
> misc.jobs charter guidelines for proper article formatting.
I don't care *how* they're formatting their posts. They are posting
too damn many of the things.
I am *so* tempted to just robocancel the whole damn lot of them.
As it is, though, I think they're going to win a place in my
spam filter's reject list.
> Specifically, the Subject: line includes consistent & accurate
> information on the location of the candidate. This is in
> distinct contrast with the other major poster to m.j.r,
> virtualresume.com, who includes NO information about the
> candidate's location. With Headhunter.NET I can easily
> scan the subject lines to determine which resumes I want
> to look at, whereas with virtualresume.com forces me to
> download each of their resumes to figure this out.
> For me, this is a major PAIN !
Great. For me, the major pain is trying to run a news server
with jerkoffs like this trying to flood me off the net. I've
removed most of the jobs groups because of people like this.
No one was reading them -- they're useless. It has to stop.
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
"Bunch of savages in this town!" --Dante ("Clerks")
brian moore
On Sun, 29 Mar 1998 04:48:30 GMT,
Jeremy <jer...@exit109.com> wrote:
> I am *so* tempted to just robocancel the whole damn lot of them.
> As it is, though, I think they're going to win a place in my
> spam filter's reject list.
I may do one better: hack dbz to always return a deleted entry for
anything with headhunter.net in the message ID. Then I can move them
from the 'reject' stack to the 'refuse' stack.
Jeffery J. Leader
I checked www.headhunter.net and the resume page is searchable. The
jobs groups are by and large a wasteland, and it sounds like the
poster here in favor of them posting on USENET is a professional too.
It's great that he finds this a useful and user-friendly way to get
the data but overall I'd have to say that this is essentially spew.
It's absolutely unreasonable.
To a certain extent autoposting is the real culprit here. These posts
are done by humans but by scripts. There are plenty of positive
examples of that, but this is out of control.
Charles Demas
In article <m31zvnnl...@windlord.Stanford.EDU>,
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>
>>> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>>> 1668
>
>
>> nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>> 2622
>
>15 minutes later:
>
>nntp-test:/var/log/news> grep 'reject.*HeadHunter.NET' news.notice | wc -l
>
>70 articles a minute. Slightly more than one article per second. This is
>a flood. Sample headers follow:
>
> news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!
> news-in-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!
> 204.181.41.2!newsman.viper.net!not-for-mail
>From: "FREE www.HeadHunter.NET" <pos...@HeadHunter.NET>
>Newsgroups: misc.jobs,misc.jobs.contract,misc.jobs.contracts,
> misc.jobs.offered,jobs.offered,us.jobs,us.jobs.offered,
> us.jobs.offered.contract,va.jobs,alt.jobs,biz.jobs.offered
>Subject: US-VA-Washington D.C. Lawson Consultant, CIBER INCORPORATED
>Supersedes: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
>Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 05:21:42 -500
>Organization: FREE www.HeadHunter.NET
>Lines: 39
>Message-ID: <JABRVYN...@news.HeadHunter.NET>
>Reply-To: MAX...@AOL.COM
>NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.16.233.71
>Xref: news.Stanford.EDU misc.jobs.contract:2507686
> misc.jobs.offered:6113987
>
I've read this thread, and nobody seems to have mentioned the
Supersedes: header that was used.
I agree that this is a lot of articles, and that it has been
crossposted to many newsgroups, but isn't this behavior, crossposting
and superseding, the behavior that is desired in these newsgroups?
I am amazed that they actually have that many jobs, but if they are
legitimate jobs, isn't this exactly the function of these newsgroups.
If a news-admin doesn't want to carry a newsgroup or newsgroups for
his user, that is fine, and users will vote with their feet.
The fact that some of these newsgroups have been rmgrouped, does
not necessarily mean that they are not still being used somewhere.
If there is one legitimate newsgroup, the article can be stored, and '
the nonexistant newsgroups (on that server) do not cause more than a
few extra bytes of header to be stored. Granted it is a waste, but
it isn't a lot.
Apparently, what you object to is merely the volume. If you don't want
to carry high volume newsgroups, don't carry them. If this is spam,
then filter it or drop it. If you feel that there should be limits
on the number of posts a domain may post, then work to get concensus
and cancel them. If you think a domain is allowing spamming, organize
a UDP, or blocking.
Perhaps these job newsgroups should be moderated to control the volume
that may be posted from one source if that source is acting as an
agent. A better idea would be to require the name of the company
where the job exists in the posting. This would allow companies
with jobs to post, and to have an agent post for them, but would
hopefully stop multiple postings by different agents of the same job.
Chuck Demas
Needham, Mass.
--
Eat Healthy | _ _ | Nothing would be done at all,
Stay Fit | @ @ | If a man waited to do it so well,
Die Anyway | v | That no one could find fault with it.
de...@tiac.net | \___/ | http://www.tiac.net/users/demas
Russ Allbery
Charles Demas <de...@sunspot.tiac.net> writes:
> I've read this thread, and nobody seems to have mentioned the
> Supersedes: header that was used.
Because it's irrelevant. Due to the volume, people have to expire these
newsgroups faster than their Supersedes anyway.
> I agree that this is a lot of articles, and that it has been crossposted
> to many newsgroups, but isn't this behavior, crossposting and
> superseding, the behavior that is desired in these newsgroups?
No, at least in my opinion. Crossposting is not the desired behavior. If
the job is regional in nature, it should be posted to *one* and *only one*
regional hierarchy jobs group. If the job warrants a broader search, it
should be posted to *one* and *only one* broader distribution group. If
it warrants a *world-wide* search, then and only then should it be posted
to misc.jobs.offered, and in that case it should be crossposted *nowhere
else*.
> I am amazed that they actually have that many jobs, but if they are
> legitimate jobs, isn't this exactly the function of these newsgroups.
The function of newsgroups is to be usable. If the behavior of someone is
rendering the newsgroups unusable, that's abusive behavior. If the person
is posting in such volumes as to threaten the Usenet infrastructure
itself, which these people are definitely doing, that's net abuse.
> Apparently, what you object to is merely the volume.
I am objecting to flooding.
> If you don't want to carry high volume newsgroups, don't carry them.
It has nothing to do with high volume newsgroups. It has to do with high
volume posters. This isn't misc.jobs.offered.headhunter-net.
> If this is spam, then filter it or drop it.
I am.
> If you feel that there should be limits on the number of posts a domain
> may post, then work to get concensus and cancel them. If you think a
> domain is allowing spamming, organize a UDP, or blocking.
That's what I'm doing. Are you objecting to something said, or just
giving a differing opinion, or...? I'm honestly missing the point of your
post.
> Perhaps these job newsgroups should be moderated to control the volume
> that may be posted from one source if that source is acting as an
> agent.
Yes, *please*. I'm wholeheartedly in support of that.
Brad Albom
Regarding Russ & Jeremy's replies ...
> No one was reading them -- they're useless. It has to stop.
I thought I was quite clear. I AM reading them AND USING them.
I really appreciate being marginalized as a "no one."
>Go read them off the web. They'll be even fresher.
Thanks, but 1) we run our own internal news server on our network
which means I can review postings pretty much as fast as I can click
(or apply our own specialized search entire to the entire newsgroup).
Also, 2) you didn't comprehend what I meant by "fresher". Fresh has
nothing to do with the timestamp of a posting, but whether the resume
represents someone that we don't already have in our database.
I could continue to respond to various points you've both made,
but it seems like you're just a couple of admins griping about
how tough your job has gotten. ... "It's using up too much
disk space" ... "there are too many postings" ... and other related
whining. So somehow you make the leap that because it's
difficult for you to do your jobs, YOUR failure WON'T matter
because your customers aren't reading or using these
newsgroups anyway. WRONG.
I'm sure glad I'm not one of your customers.
And as a final point of information, let me say that I'm probably the
only professional in the "placement" business who's reading this abuse
newsgroup or following this thread. However, I know I'm NOT the only
one in the business who's using the misc.jobs heirarchy. My company
has and continues to place people in jobs based on postings in these
newsgroups. If you want to limit YOUR customers' use of these groups,
fine, filter to your heart's content. Just please don't presume to tell
me what's useful and what's not.
JMHO,
-brad a.
Russ Allbery
Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
Brad, please do not take any of the following personally. I am sure that
you're a very responsible person who cares a great deal about Usenet and
simply happens to disagree with me on this single issue. This is not
aimed at you, even though I know from the beginning it sounds very much
like it is. I don't know who this is aimed at. But I'm in a pissy mood
right now and I started responding to your post and I started getting
angrier and angrier about the state of the world while I was doing so, and
this is what came out.
This started as being about jobs newsgroups. By the end of this, it had
nothing to do with jobs newsgroups. Take it for what you will.
Brad Albom <"bradal@"@ibm.net> writes:
> I could continue to respond to various points you've both made, but it
> seems like you're just a couple of admins griping about how tough your
> job has gotten. ... "It's using up too much disk space" ... "there are
> too many postings" ... and other related whining. So somehow you make
> the leap that because it's difficult for you to do your jobs, YOUR
> failure WON'T matter because your customers aren't reading or using
> these newsgroups anyway. WRONG.
Brad, look. I run a *NEWS* server. I do not run a jobs database. Got
it? My server resources do not exist for your convenience. They exist
for the convenience of the Stanford community.
The Stanford community is not reading those groups because they're
unreadable.
That's right. A population, one forth of which at any given time is
pretty much looking for jobs on a full-time basis *IS NOT READING
misc.jobs.* BECAUSE IT'S FSCKING UNREADABLE BY HUMANS!*
Somewhere along the line, those newsgroups broke. I don't know what the
hell it's going to take to fix them. Something massive, I'm sure. In the
meantime, people like HeadHunter.NET are not helping matters any. I
refuse to be a casualty in a war of escalation. I refuse to let my news
server be a casualty in a war of escalation. Recruiters have gotten it
into their head that if they just post faster than the other recruiters,
they'll be the ones whose ads people see first.
That's doomed. That's flat-out doomed. The result is that the readers
are all going to leave (they pretty much all have) and sooner or later
stuff is going to start melting down.
The fact that you still manage to make useful use of those groups is
impressive, but in the end irrelevant. If you want a jobs database of
this sort, there are more efficient ways of going about it than by doing
this. Right down to the simplest (if you really want to use a flood-fill
algorithm for distribution of jobs database) of creating a jobs.*
hierarchy explicitly for such use.
Apologies for my old-fashioned ways, but you know, I still have this
deluded belief that Usenet proper is actually for the use of humans, and
that groups which are not readable by normal humans don't belong in the
standard hierarchies for *human* discussion and should be handled
separately.
And yes, now that you mention it, I also have this problem with
news.lists.filters, despite the fact that I proposed the damned thing. No
one seems to listen to me when I talk about out-of-band distribution
methods for NoCeMs, control messages, or something else along those lines.
*sigh*
And yes, I still propagate local posts to misc.jobs.offered (a damn sight
faster than I would if I were dealing with all of the HeadHunter.NET
flood), so whatever service that provides to my local community is still
being provided. Of course, I think that service is pretty small, since
*NO ONE HERE ACTUALLY POSTS TO THE DAMN GROUP* because they see stuff
like:
====== 100592 unread articles in misc.jobs.offered -- read now? [+ynq]
and think "you know what, the chances of me actually finding a job within
a random selection of 100,000 jobs from random places in the world is
worse than if I walk into a random company on the street and apply, and if
I had a job to offer, I would do better by advertising in the newspaper
than in competing with 100,000 other people who are posting 10,000 jobs a
day." And you know what, they're right.
So do you have a way of fixing that? Hey, I'm all ears. Everyone who
successfully reads that group claims that all they do is filter on the
subject line. So why don't we just send out a few giant posts with just
the subject lines and URLs, and you can go clicky clicky on the ones that
sound interesting and I don't have to waste disk space storing a bunch of
text you don't read and a bunch of headers listing in excruciating detail
precisely every server that was abused to bring you this morning's
rendition of the Idiot's Law of Duck Hunting. "If I fire enough bullets
into the air, eventually I'll hit *something*!"
Or, alternatively, you can keep bitching at me about how I don't know how
to do my job, or claim to me that the group is serving a purpose for the
people I'm serving when you don't have the logs to back that up and I do,
or somehow claim that by voodoo magic my storage of jobs postings sent by
HeadHunter.NET helps them get to you better. Or, hell, you can claim that
the existence of recruiter downloads in misc.jobs.offered will cure world
hunger and is singlehandedly responsible for the end of the cold war.
It'll make about as much sense.
Because I can explain to you right now why you and they and everyone else
involved in this wants to use Usenet rather than coming up with a real
solution to a problem that Usenet was not intended to solve. Laziness.
That's right, you're lazy, they're lazy, news distribution is a solved
problem, there's this nice, large network of mutually cooperating sites
that for some deluded reason are doing all of this for free, if you buy a
cheap connection to a fast pipe and dump a bunch of articles in everything
happens magically and doesn't cost you a dime, and hey, even better, so
many people have put so much time and energy into making the Usenet
protocols easy to use that they can hire some cheap student programmer to
write a one-off script to dump their database into a Usenet newsgroup,
leave it running on some forgotten computer, and never touch it. Wow!
This is just a dream come true!
Heaven forbid that you would have to actually clicky clicky on their web
site and (*gasp*) *wait* for their web server to respond when the entire
Internet exists to be exploited to move bytes around for you. Or that it
would occur to you that, you know, there are these programs that do web
mirroring and, you know, you could run one from your nice local fast
server every night and download the web pages *yourself*, and then you
would actually be taking responsibility for your own needs and not making
other people pay money to give you the information you would pay money to
have.
But hey, why would you do that? News is already there! And it's fast and
easy and free and you don't have to do any extra work and the only people
who actually believe that it's for anything as prosaic as actual
discussion are all old, bitter news admins who just can't keep up with the
times and don't know how to keep their servers running under perfectly
reasonable loads.
Do you have any idea why I do what I do? Do you have *any* idea at *all*?
You think this is just a job I'm hired to do? Let me tell you something
about jobs. I could walk out the door tomorrow and have a job by next
Monday paying twice what Stanford can pay me. I know. I've been offered
them. You know why I turned them down?
Because I wouldn't get to pick what I wanted to do. And I sure as hell
wouldn't be running news servers.
You think ISPs actually consider news important? Wrong. News is not
where the money comes from. News is not the sexy application. News is
not the thing that gets written up in magazines and newspapers all the
time and that is glitzy and pretty and provides lots of eye candy for the
sales force to use.
Who the hell do you think is keeping Usenet running, anyway? You think
we're doing this just because it's our *job*?
God.
I don't know what makes me more sick, the fact that people don't have any
clue what actually goes into keeping this thing that they're using
running, or that when they find out they don't care. And that's ironic.
That's really fucking ironic, because Usenet is also the place where one
can find a *real community* of people who actually *understands* what it
meant to do something for the love of it. To throw your time and
resources and and energy into something that no one is ever going to pay
you a dime for, for no other reason than, damn it all, it's *cool* and
people *use* it and it actually helps people *talk*.
Yes. Present tense. You will never, never, *EVER* see me post the two
sentences in past tense, because if those sentences ever become past
tense, I won't be posting.
There are people here who understand how it felt to be a teenaged kid who
wandered into a newsgroup about comics because he collected comics at the
time and it was something interesting to talk about. Who had the
experience of walking into a culture and a community in the process, with
its own legends and history and elder figures and mythology, where the
Reverend Scowling Jim Cowling flaming Holbrook was a spectator sport,
where one heard stories of the legends like Chuq von Rospach and Jayembee
who had been posting there *just* before you got there but you weren't
quite there soon enough to see them in all their glory, where no one
really took any of this all that seriously except for the friendships
formed in the process. Who, a year or two later when he'd long since
given up comic collecting and lost interest in comics altogether found he
was still hanging out with the same people in the same places, because the
thing that Usenet did, the *important* thing that Usenet did that put
everything else to shame, was that it provided a way for all of the cool
people in the world to actually meet each other.
Sure, I've been involved in Usenet politics for years now, involved in
newsgroup creation, and I enjoy that sort of thing. If I didn't, I
wouldn't be doing it. But I've walked through the countryside of Maine in
the snow and seen branches bent to the ground under the weight of it
because of Usenet, I've been in a room with fifty people screaming the
chorus of "March of Cambreadth" at a Heather Alexander concert in Seattle
because of Usenet, I've written some of the best damn stuff I've ever
written in my life because of Usenet, I *started* writing because of
Usenet, I understand my life and my purpose and my center because of
Usenet, and you know 80% of what Usenet has given me has fuck all to do
with computers and everything to do with people. Because none of that was
in a post. I didn't read any of that in a newsgroup. And yet it all came
out of posts, and the people behind them, and the interaction with them,
and the conversations that came later, and the plane trips across the
country to meet people I otherwise never would have known existed.
That's what this is all about. That's why I do what I do.
People.
Do you know what it's like to see something that you've put your heart and
soul into creating grow and flourish and *become* one of those
communities? What it feels like to give back to someone, someone just
discovering the Internet, those same feelings of wonder and awe and warmth
and community and friendship that you found? To receive, not the welcome
random bit of thanks here and there, but the far deeper and more wonderful
knowledge that you've built and maintained something that people are
*using* and using to do things and see things and think things that they
otherwise would never be able to do or would have no outlet for?
Do you know what it's like to have a friend of yours randomly on a whim
decide something in a newsgroup you created is interesting and engaging
enough to post to Usenet for the first time? And then to experience the
horrible, sinking knowledge that with that post he's likely to get his
mailbox flooded with spam? Or the raw fear that he'll then never post
again, scared away, when this place that has given you so much could give
that to him as well, and that he could give the same to other people? And
that, damn it all, he's one of the cool people in this world, and you
don't know what these groups are all for, in the end, but if they're for
anything at all, they should be for people like him?
Do you know what it feels like to know that your news server, despite the
fact that it's some of the best hardware you can get with your available
resources for an application that most people just don't care about, is
running a backlog? That you're dropping incoming articles? That
somewhere, *somewhere* there are things being posted which you are not
receiving? They could be junk, they could be beautiful, well-expressed
pieces of someone's soul, and you DON'T KNOW, you CAN'T KNOW, because
legions of fucking vandals are throwing so much *CRAP* at your news server
that it's running flat out trying to process it and delete it and just
can't go any faster?
Let me tell you this: there's a rage in that. There is a cold rage that
you feel at that because, God damn it, it is not acceptable, it is NOT
FUCKING ACCEPTABLE for a *single* post that is from a *person* talking to
other *people* to be deleted, to be dropped on the uncaring floor to make
room for machine generated spew.
Period.
And you can talk to me about free speech and applications and the future
of communication and the use to which people put such things until you're
blue in the face, and when you ask me if there's really such a thing as
good speech and bad speech, I'll still say yes. Because there are people
talking to other people and there are machines talking to no one as loud
as they can to try to make people listen, and damn it, there *is* a
difference, and the first one *does* deserve to be here more than the
second one. And I don't know how to tell the difference reliably either,
but that has jack to do with the way I feel about it.
And to all of the spammers and database dumpers and multiposters out
there, I say this: You want to read that stuff, fine. You want to create
a network for such things, fine. You want to explore the theoretical
boundaries of free speech, fine. But when it starts impacting *people*
trying to *communicate*, then that is where I draw the line. This is not
a negotiation and this is not a threat; this is simply a fact. I've been
through pain and joy with this network, I've seen communities form and
wither and reform, I've met friends and lost friends here, I've learned
things and discovered things and created things. I've seen people make a
home here when they didn't have any other, not on a newsgroup, not with a
bunch of electrons, but with people that they've met and communities that
they've found and support that they've received from people who had just
the words they needed to hear and would never have known they existed, and
by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it.
Rex Tincher
Russ Allbery wrote:
<big snip>
> I've been
> through pain and joy with this network, I've seen communities form and
> wither and reform, I've met friends and lost friends here, I've learned
> things and discovered things and created things. I've seen people make a
> home here when they didn't have any other, not on a newsgroup, not with a
> bunch of electrons, but with people that they've met and communities that
> they've found and support that they've received from people who had just
> the words they needed to hear and would never have known they existed, and
> by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it.
This isn't just a rant, it's the new FAQ on "What is Usenet?".
Beautiful! I just archived it away.
Lysander Spooner
On 31 Mar 1998 05:01:34 -0800, Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
A rant which I have archived for future reference, and one which I
expect to quote often, reread frequently, and continue to regard with
_awed_ admiration.
That was the best Usenet article I have read for a _very_ long time.
-- Rick
------------
** "Awe" is not a term I use lightly, either... **
Timothy J. Miller
Brad Albom <"bradal@"@ibm.net> writes:
> I thought I was quite clear. I AM reading them AND USING them.
> I really appreciate being marginalized as a "no one."
Unfortunately, Brad, if you're reading them from my server
*you're about the only one*. Look at the stats I posted to
news.admin.hierarchies a week or so ago for proof.
> Thanks, but 1) we run our own internal news server on our network
> which means I can review postings pretty much as fast as I can click
And I'm pretty sure you are as you admit later to sucking the
news off the server. BTW, that's an unfriendly practice in and of
itself.
--
Cerebus <tmi...@ibm.net>
Timothy J. Miller
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
Amen and hallelujah, brother.
--
Cerebus <tmi...@ibm.net>
Jeremy
Brad Albom <"bradal@"@ibm.net> wrote:
> I could continue to respond to various points you've both made,
> but it seems like you're just a couple of admins griping about
> how tough your job has gotten. ... "It's using up too much
> disk space" ... "there are too many postings" ... and other related
> whining. So somehow you make the leap that because it's
> difficult for you to do your jobs, YOUR failure WON'T matter
> because your customers aren't reading or using these
> newsgroups anyway. WRONG.
>
> I'm sure glad I'm not one of your customers.
I can't possibly top Russ's beautiful reply, so I'll just say that he
has said exactly what I feel.
But I just wanted to add that I'm sure glad you're not one of my
customers, too. Because providing those groups for your use would
mean my company would lose money on you. I'm more than happy to
let you take your business elsewhere.
I dropped most of the jobs groups, including almost all of misc.jobs.*,
after checking back for six months and finding that *no one* had accessed
those groups other than me, and my accesses were just to see what the
hell was going on in there.
No one has ever complained. No one has ever asked where those groups
went, where they are, why I don't carry them, or asked me to add them
back in. Not one single person. Ever.
Carrying those groups would be doing a disservice to my paying customers.
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
"If it's not real, WHY DOES IT TAKE UP DISK SPACE?" --bev.
net.subculture.usenet
John Dilick
Yea, verily, on 31 Mar 1998 05:01:34 -0800, Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu>
proclaimed:
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
*sniff*
That was beautiful, Russ.
This should be required reading for anybody asking "What is this Usenet
thing?"
--
John Dilick dili...@home.com
"If there's anything Usenet has a rampant trade surplus on, it's shit."
- John S. Novak, III in rasfwr-j.
David R. Henry
Russ's awesome summary of Why We Love Usenet deleted for this comment:
Oh, bravo, Eagle! You finally learned how to write 'em!
Most impressive.
--
dhe...@plains.nodak.edu *** Lion Clan Abomination **** Rogue Fan Club ****
Support competancy: Seven for Captain!\Shouldn't No. 1 Blues be paid some?
What was the question? --Kate Bush // All you of Earth are IDIOTS! --P9fOS
Tim Skirvin
li...@wilhelp.TAKEthisOUT.com (Phoenix) writes:
>You know, someone really *ought to* make up a document like that. Russ
>defined the blessings and curses of Usenet in spades there. A comprehensive
>explanation really doesn't come along very often or very completely.
I've been considering doing it for weeks/months/years now; I just
haven't had too much luck starting it, and working on my various
programming projects has just seemed more rewarding... Maybe I'll get
something done this summer. Dunno.
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<URL:http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/> Skirv's Homepage <*>
<URL:http://www.killfile.org/dungeon/> The Killfile Dungeon
Charles Demas
[posted and emailed]
In article <m3n2e76m...@windlord.Stanford.EDU>,
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>The Stanford community is not reading those groups because they're
>unreadable.
>
>That's right. A population, one forth of which at any given time is
>pretty much looking for jobs on a full-time basis *IS NOT READING
>misc.jobs.* BECAUSE IT'S FSCKING UNREADABLE BY HUMANS!*
>
>Somewhere along the line, those newsgroups broke. I don't know what
>the hell it's going to take to fix them. Something massive, I'm sure.
You want it fixed, here are some ideas that I think would do it.
I think that what is required is to split the newsgroup into subgroups
based upon location of the job. These subgroups may have to be finer
than merely states (for the USA). This will also have to be moderated
to insure that posting guidelines are followed, and that agents that
are posting jobs that they are not offering directly are limited in
how many jobs they may post to a newsgroup. A proven attempt to
avoid that limitation would be subject to a refusal of further posts
from the entire hierarchy for some period of time. Repeat offenses
would incur more severe penalties.
I would further require that postings by agents list a registered agent
number so that volume could be easily tracked. Registered agents would
not be required to give the company name where the job existed, but
would be required to state the agent number in the subject. I can
imagine that registration could be a subscription to a mailing list
(with email verification) so that they could be informed of changes in
the hierarchies and other like stuff. Registered agents would be
listed on a web page(s) accessable to all (robo)moderators and other
interested readers. Postings by agents would require a predetermined
format.
If I had my way, each post would required the state and the city where
the job was located. Most people are looking for jobs only in
specific locations, and if the posts were sorted into newsgroups
by location, it would save readers from that sorting process.
I would also require that the first several lines of the post body
be in a specified format. City, State, Company, Category, etc.
Failure to comply would bounce the post to the sender with an
explaination.
A further split by job category would be helpful if the newsgroup
volume were too great. Since the newsgroups would be robomoderated,
as the newsgroup were split, posts to the higher group could be bounced
to the poster with instructions as to how to properly post to the
new subdivisions. A periodic posting in the higher groups would tell
all of the structures below them.
This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
Brad Albom
Regarding ...
> > I thought I was quite clear. I AM reading them AND USING them.
> > I really appreciate being marginalized as a "no one."
>
> Unfortunately, Brad, if you're reading them from my server
> *you're about the only one*. Look at the stats I posted to
> news.admin.hierarchies a week or so ago for proof.
I never said that I was reading them from your server, see below.
> > Thanks, but 1) we run our own internal news server on our network
> > which means I can review postings pretty much as fast as I can click
>
> And I'm pretty sure you are as you admit later to sucking the
> news off the server. BTW, that's an unfriendly practice in and of
> itself.
Huh ? Let me be a little more clear. My company maintains its own
domain. We PAY our provider for resolving our domain AND for providing
us a limited newsfeed (jobs related groups) which I/we then provide
to our internal network using cnews. Pretty much the same way ISPs
operate, except we do it all with dial-out uucp, to guarantee our
newwork's security. (No one can break into our network if our modem
doesn't pick up the phone). As such, we're not taking "advantage" of
or being "unfriendly" to anyone. We're paying for the service
we're receiving, just like all the other providers.
Hope this helps,
-brad a.
Jeffery J. Leader
This pretty much says it's more appropriate for the web than
newsgroups. When this subject was last being heatedly debated here,
some people posted stats showing how little the jobs groups were read.
OTOH your point of view on this is different from what we've heard
before and so I appreciate your posting. Please don't let the heat
drive you away...
Jeffery J. Leader
For those who don't make it all the way through this post--which would
be a shame, incidentally--this seems to me to be an excellent
explanation of the core issue of the matter at hand (the huge volume
of posts on the *.jobs.* groups, which forces those few who use them
to do so by some sort of searching/filtering):
Jeffery J. Leader
de...@sunspot.tiac.net (Charles Demas) wrote:
>This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
You're describing a web site. Click on the desired subcategory. Keep
clicking until you get as specific as you like.
Jeffery J. Leader
This just isn't right...take the lead and set up a web-based service
for you and the rest, I'd say.
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Wed, 01 Apr 1998 04:17:20 GMT,
JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>For those who don't make it all the way through this post--which would
>be a shame, incidentally--this seems to me to be an excellent
>explanation of the core issue of the matter at hand (the huge volume
>of posts on the *.jobs.* groups, which forces those few who use them
>to do so by some sort of searching/filtering):
>Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>>Because I can explain to you right now why you and they and everyone else
>>involved in this wants to use Usenet rather than coming up with a real
>>solution to a problem that Usenet was not intended to solve. Laziness.
>>That's right, you're lazy, they're lazy, news distribution is a solved
>>problem, there's this nice, large network of mutually cooperating sites
>>that for some deluded reason are doing all of this for free, if you buy a
>>cheap connection to a fast pipe and dump a bunch of articles in everything
>>happens magically and doesn't cost you a dime, and hey, even better, so
>>many people have put so much time and energy into making the Usenet
>>protocols easy to use that they can hire some cheap student programmer to
>>write a one-off script to dump their database into a Usenet newsgroup,
>>leave it running on some forgotten computer, and never touch it. Wow!
>>This is just a dream come true!
Right on, Russ Allbery, right on!
Henrietta Thomas
h...@wwa.com
who hasn't yet seen the original "A Rant"
Lionel Lauer
Quoth Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> :
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
Russ,
That post is one of the most beautiful things I've read in a *very*
long time.
It literally brought tears to the eyes of this particular vicious
bastard.
I want to thank you very much for summing up all the reasons why I
love Usenet, & why I believe that it's worth whatever it takes to
preserve it as a medium for *people* to communicate with *people*.
If you have no objections, I'm archiving this one for posterity, as
well as for presenting to people who ask me why I bother fighting the
spammers & other leeches who'd destroy Usenet with their scrabbling
for imaginary dollars.
Lionel.
--
W Lionel Lauer - Now de-munged for your emailing pleasure.
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Johnson--see sig
On 31 Mar 1998 05:01:34 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
<excellent article snipped.>
Thank you.
_______________________________________________________
mailcity.com is read weekly, wesnet.com is read daily.
I'm djohnson@ both places. Take your pick.
Russ Allbery
Wow.
I've received more mail from that post, by an order of magnitude, than
anything else I've ever posted. *slightly embarassed grin* Thank you.
The followups both public and private have really made my past few days,
in a lot of ways.
And one of the big ones is the confirmation that there *are* a lot of
people out there who feel the same way as I do, who haven't given up on
this entire affair, and who have the same love of Usenet that I do.
That's what this is all about, after all. It's not about revenge, it's
not about defeating the evil people, it's about preserving something
that's truly beautiful, something that we love.
Several people have asked me if I would mind if they distributed my
message further. No, not at all; please feel free to pass it along as
appropriate. (If it becomes a chain letter, I promise that my ghost will
haunt you to the end of your days, but apart from that... :))
I do, however, have one important request to anyone who wants to archive a
copy or pass it along to friends: Please remove Brad's name from the
original before you do so. As I said in the prefix, the message was not
aimed at him, I'm sure that he would largely agree with what I said, and
in no way do I want him to be immortalized as the target of that message.
Hopefully this request will catch up with the distribution of the original
message, which seems to have already gone fairly wide.
And yes, I'll put a copy up on the web sometime in the relatively near
future. After all, the original had three typos that I wanted to fix. :)
No, I don't intend to make it a FAQ for news.announce.newusers, just
because I don't think the message is aimed at new users, or that they
would necessarily appreciated. It's aimed at the battle-scarred veterans
who understand why it is that we do what we do.
Russ Allbery
Phoenix <li...@wilhelp.TAKEthisOUT.com> writes:
> You have a gift for profound understatement, Russ. Would you horribly
> mind if I used parts of that or paraphrases thereof for my FAQs and
> various other spam-related items?
No, not at all; feel free.
Russ Allbery
Charles Demas <de...@sunspot.tiac.net> writes:
> I think that what is required is to split the newsgroup into subgroups
> based upon location of the job. These subgroups may have to be finer
> than merely states (for the USA).
See, this is the thing. We've already *done* that.
atl.jobs Jobs in Atlanta, GA.
austin.jobs Jobs available, wanted, and discussion in Austin, Texas
ba.jobs.agency Permanent job postings from agencies.
ba.jobs.contract.agency Contract/Temp job postings from agencies.
ba.jobs.contract.direct Contract/Temp job postings from principals.
ba.jobs.direct Agencies placing permanent employees.
ba.jobs.discussion Discussion of the San Francisco Bay Area job market.
ba.jobs.resumes Resume Postings for Bay Area Jobs.
dc.jobs Jobs offered or wanted in the DC area.
fl.jobs.computers.application Software application job in Florida (Moderated)
fl.jobs.computers.misc Computer related job postings in Florida. (Moderated)
fl.jobs.computers.programming Computer programming job in Florida (Moderated)
fl.jobs.misc Miscellaneous Florida job postings. (Moderated)
fl.jobs.resumes Job seekers seeking Florida employment. (Moderated)
fl.jobs.telecommute Telecommutable Florida job postings. (Moderated)
fl.jobs.www WWW Florida job links. (Moderated)
[...]
That's what the regional jobs groups are *for*. And it's trivial to get
regional groups from elsewhere in the country (or world); we carry all of
the above here at Stanford.
What happens is that jobs postings get crossposted to the world-wide
groups *plus* some random selection of all of those, plus a bunch of other
random places (comp.jobs.*, alt.jobs.*, us.jobs.* which doesn't exist,
etc.).
> This will also have to be moderated to insure that posting guidelines
> are followed, and that agents that are posting jobs that they are not
> offering directly are limited in how many jobs they may post to a
> newsgroup. A proven attempt to avoid that limitation would be subject
> to a refusal of further posts from the entire hierarchy for some period
> of time. Repeat offenses would incur more severe penalties.
Some folks have tried to do that with the ba.* hierarchy (admittedly via
retromod, which I don't like nearly as well as I'd like straight robomod).
Result: The people posting job ads go to *incredible* lengths to avoid
the restrictions. They post from multiple places, disguise their identity
in various ways, etc.
It's probably doable, but it would require starting *really* strict.
> I would further require that postings by agents list a registered agent
> number so that volume could be easily tracked. Registered agents would
> not be required to give the company name where the job existed, but
> would be required to state the agent number in the subject.
Or in some other header. I think that's a good idea. It would be even
better if we could require PGP verification of agents....
> If I had my way, each post would required the state and the city where
> the job was located.
Yes, definitely.
> A further split by job category would be helpful if the newsgroup volume
> were too great. Since the newsgroups would be robomoderated, as the
> newsgroup were split, posts to the higher group could be bounced to the
> poster with instructions as to how to properly post to the new
> subdivisions. A periodic posting in the higher groups would tell all of
> the structures below them.
Yup.
> This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
Yes, it would. A comprehensive plan like this is really what should be
done. Various people have come up with things along these lines that I
think would work, at least better than what we have now would.
The problem is actually getting something like that implemented. The fl.*
folks managed, but the volume in these groups is absolutely staggering, as
is the infrastructure requirements to really set up working robomod. Even
the mail volume all by itself is an impressive problem.
Russ Allbery
Lionel Lauer <nos...@sexzilla.net> writes:
> If you have no objections, I'm archiving this one for posterity, as well
> as for presenting to people who ask me why I bother fighting the
> spammers & other leeches who'd destroy Usenet with their scrabbling for
> imaginary dollars.
I have no objections at all. :) Just the request that the name of the
person to whom I was following up be taken out for archival purposes.
Russ Allbery
David R Henry <dhe...@plains.NoDak.edu> writes:
> Russ's awesome summary of Why We Love Usenet deleted for this comment:
> Oh, bravo, Eagle! You finally learned how to write 'em!
> Most impressive.
*grin* Thanks.
(In a roundabout way, you know it's all your fault that I got involved in
newsgroup creation and Usenet politics and the like in the first place.)
Rex Tincher
In article <3522c075...@news.mindspring.com>, JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>de...@sunspot.tiac.net (Charles Demas) wrote:
>>This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
>
>clicking until you get as specific as you like.
>
Like http://www.ajb.dni.us/ for instance. An Altavista search
turns up a dozen more like it.
--
My opinions are neither mine nor those of my employer,
just a bunch of drunken bits trying to find their way home.
Charles Demas
In article <3522c075...@news.mindspring.com>,
Jeffery J. Leader <JeffL...@MindSpring.com> wrote:
>de...@sunspot.tiac.net (Charles Demas) wrote:
>>This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
>
>You're describing a web site. Click on the desired subcategory. Keep
>clicking until you get as specific as you like.
Yeah, and a newsgroup is like a bulletin board on a web site.
What's your point? Should we eliminate newsgroups, and just have
web sites?
? the platypus {aka David Formosa}
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
[...]
I have a habbit of collecting pithy sentences or paragraphs, but every
line of this rant is wonderfull, every line supports the thesus of the
author. This post says what I beleave BUT 10^n times better I could
express.
I am in full support of the senterments expressed by Mr Allbery on this
matter.
--
I'm a perl programer if you need perl programing hire me. Buy easter bilbies.
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url. Support NoCeM
http://www.cit.nepean.uws.edu.au/~dformosa/Spelling.html http://www.cm.org/
I'm sorry but I just don't consider 'because its yucky' a convincing argument
endothelial legibility
In article <6fv929$4...@news-central.tiac.net>,
Charles Demas <de...@sunspot.tiac.net> wrote:
>In article <3522c075...@news.mindspring.com>,
>Jeffery J. Leader <JeffL...@MindSpring.com> wrote:
>>de...@sunspot.tiac.net (Charles Demas) wrote:
>>>This would make these newsgroups much more readable and useful.
>>You're describing a web site. Click on the desired subcategory. Keep
>>clicking until you get as specific as you like.
His point is, use the right tool for the job.
rone
--
Lee, and as a new guy around here I mean this in the nicest possible way,
but your sociology sucks, your grasp of the computer industry is weak, and
you need to take econ 101. - Marty J. Fouts <fo...@null.net>
Nyarlathotep, Haunter of the Dark
On 31 Mar 1998 05:01:34 -0800, Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu>
wrote:
<snippage of one of the most righteous pieces of ranting I've
seen in a loooooong time>
>And to all of the spammers and database dumpers and multiposters out
>there, I say this: You want to read that stuff, fine. You want to create
>a network for such things, fine. You want to explore the theoretical
>boundaries of free speech, fine. But when it starts impacting *people*
>trying to *communicate*, then that is where I draw the line. This is not
>a negotiation and this is not a threat; this is simply a fact. I've been
>through pain and joy with this network, I've seen communities form and
>wither and reform, I've met friends and lost friends here, I've learned
>things and discovered things and created things. I've seen people make a
>home here when they didn't have any other, not on a newsgroup, not with a
>bunch of electrons, but with people that they've met and communities that
>they've found and support that they've received from people who had just
>the words they needed to hear and would never have known they existed, and
>by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it.
*sits back and stares at the screen in awestruck silence*
Thank you, thank you, thank you; from the bottom of my inky
heart, thank you. I may not be a news admin, but I first got
involved in net abuse issues out of rage over things that were
being done to some of my favorite newsgroups. Trace it all back,
and I owe new interests, valuable information, my dearest
friendships, and the most satisfying job I've ever had to this
network...and I'm not about to give it up either.
I'll be archiving this post for inspiration on those black nights
when things seem hopeless; thank you again for reminding us
"bitter old cranks" that we're not alone.
I think I'm in love... *grin*
--
Nyarla, Erol's Abuse Minion <nyarla...@erols.com>
"What his fate would be, he did not know, but he felt he was
held for the coming of that frightful soul and messenger
of infinity's Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep."
David R. Henry
Russ Allbery writes:
>> Oh, bravo, Eagle! You finally learned how to write 'em!
>
>> Most impressive.
>
>*grin* Thanks.
No problem. Thanks for writing it!
>(In a roundabout way, you know it's all your fault that I got involved in
>newsgroup creation and Usenet politics and the like in the first place.)
I refuse to take responsibility for your own moral degeneracies in
being interested in such tawdry affairs. Trying to make me feel
guilty, at my age. The shame!
--
dhe...@plains.nodak.edu * Lion Clan Nezumi * Rogue Fan Club * Fallen Writer
Shouldn't talk so loud, shouldn't walk so proud, just a face in the crowd..
What was the question? --Kate Bush /// All you of Earth are IDIOTS! --P9fOS
Russ Allbery
Dave Hayes <da...@jetcafe.org> writes:
> Hi Russ. Of course you won't take any of this personally. :)
Nope. :)
> Which I would immediately suggest someone create, perhaps the people at
> Headhunter.net, except that -no one would carry it-. Job offers are only
> effective when widely distributed, and what you (and many other) admins
> have been saying is "we won't distribute this".
I definitely would carry jobs newsgroups that were set up in some fashion
that was *usable* for my average user. Like I've said, job hunting is a
big deal to my user population. This is something they *need*. They
can't use the existing groups; if someone can provide me with groups they
can use, I would definitely carry them.
> Nonsense! Simple searches are possible in -every- newsreader I've ever
> seen. You can simply search for a set of keywords that describe what you
> do, and you come up with articles. If I was trying to find a job, I'd
> -want- lots and lots of job offers in the same place, so I could be
> assured that my searches would turn up something interesting.
But the facts, and we have a lot of factual data on this one, are against
this. This is *not* what people are doing. They're seeing the volume and
they're giving up.
No matter what potential usability there is in something, it isn't actual
usability unless it's being used, and the groups aren't being used. What
conclusions to draw from that is another matter, but it seems quite clear
that one flooded group is not what people want or know how to use.
> Other people should not put themselves in the position to be charged
> money by someone else's postings. I discussed with you a way to prevent
> sites from costing you more money than everyone else does, I firmly
> believe that it is the responsibility of the news admin to ensure that
> this doesn't happen.
We live in a world of limited resources; there will *always* be limited
resources. Things have to be prioritized along *some* measure.
Specialized information which is expensive to store and not usable to the
average reader would seem to be an obvious thing to shift to a different
network or cost model.
> Whoa. Yes, I know what this is like. And I flat out -refuse- to "protect
> these people from the evil villans".
And if you believe that's what I'm advocating, you've *completely* missed
the point.
A question for you, Dave: Is it possible to believe, to *truly* believe
in something, with a passion and intensity and a willingness to defend it
against anything that would hurt it, without making anyone *specific* into
the enemy?
And a second question: What makes people more likely to attack other
people? Having something that they care about, or not having anything
that they care about?
I don't hate HeadHunter.NET. I love Usenet. There's a very important
difference.
Chris Lewis
In article <87afa67...@ibm.net>, Timothy J. Miller <tmi...@ibm.net> wrote:
>Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>
>> Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
>
All I can say is: "I wish I said that!".
--
Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated.
Cold but happy, please pass the thermos!
For more information on spam, see http://spam.abuse.net/spam
Dave Hayes
Russ Allbery wrote:
> Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
Hi Russ. Of course you won't take any of this personally. :)
Too many people supported this rant (which was pretty damn expressive) without
realizing just -what- they were supporting. Most of your points are good, but
some of it I'd like to respond to.
> Somewhere along the line, those newsgroups broke. I don't know what the
> hell it's going to take to fix them. Something massive, I'm sure.
It's called removing "expectations". There are no reasonable ones where large
groups of humans are involved.
> The fact that you still manage to make useful use of those groups is
> impressive, but in the end irrelevant. If you want a jobs database of
> this sort, there are more efficient ways of going about it than by doing
> this. Right down to the simplest (if you really want to use a flood-fill
> algorithm for distribution of jobs database) of creating a jobs.*
> hierarchy explicitly for such use.
Which I would immediately suggest someone create, perhaps the people
at Headhunter.net, except that -no one would carry it-. Job offers
are only effective when widely distributed, and what you (and many other)
admins have been saying is "we won't distribute this".
I'm sure you can see why nothing has been done to solve this problem.
Lots still carry misc.jobs.*
> and think "you know what, the chances of me actually finding a job within
> a random selection of 100,000 jobs from random places in the world is
> worse than if I walk into a random company on the street and apply, and if
> I had a job to offer, I would do better by advertising in the newspaper
> than in competing with 100,000 other people who are posting 10,000 jobs a
> day." And you know what, they're right.
Nonsense! Simple searches are possible in -every- newsreader I've ever
seen. You can simply search for a set of keywords that describe what
you do, and you come up with articles. If I was trying to find a job,
I'd -want- lots and lots of job offers in the same place, so I could
be assured that my searches would turn up something interesting.
> mirroring and, you know, you could run one from your nice local fast
> server every night and download the web pages *yourself*, and then you
> would actually be taking responsibility for your own needs and not making
> other people pay money to give you the information you would pay money to
> have.
Other people should not put themselves in the position to be charged money
by someone else's postings. I discussed with you a way to prevent sites
from costing you more money than everyone else does, I firmly believe that
it is the responsibility of the news admin to ensure that this doesn't happen.
This -doesn't- abdicate headhunter.net from their very real cost (especially
at 10K articles/day, that's resource abuse ). It merely takes away the
argument "that cost me money", which if extended ad absurdum can make a
very real case for censorship of things that you -do- want to see.
> You think ISPs actually consider news important? Wrong.
Sorry, Russ. Some ISPs do consider news important. Altopia, EarthLink,
SuperNews are the easy ones to prove.
> Do you know what it's like to have a friend of yours randomly on a whim
> decide something in a newsgroup you created is interesting and engaging
> enough to post to Usenet for the first time? And then to experience the
> horrible, sinking knowledge that with that post he's likely to get his
> mailbox flooded with spam? Or the raw fear that he'll then never post
> again, scared away, when this place that has given you so much could give
> that to him as well, and that he could give the same to other people?
> And that, damn it all, he's one of the cool people in this world, and you
> don't know what these groups are all for, in the end, but if they're for
> anything at all, they should be for people like him?
Whoa. Yes, I know what this is like. And I flat out -refuse- to "protect
these people from the evil villans". Do you know why? Because down that
road lies all the things I am against: fascism, dictatorship, and loss
of freedom.
I sympathize with this sentiment, but I cannot agree that it means anything
other than sorrow, and I cannot agree with using this emotion to take action.
This is a technological forum. I will continue to maintain that the solutions
you all seek are mostly technological in nature, and should be pursued by
those who complain about the problems the most. Really. (Even me.)
--
Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - da...@jetcafe.org
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<
Freedom Knight of Usenet - (NEW!) http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
"There *is* no 'try'. Either do, or do not." -Yoda
Timothy J. Miller
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> And if you believe that's what I'm advocating, you've *completely* missed
> the point.
Dave always misses the point. He seems to think free speech
guarantees an audience and a forum; in fact there is no such guarantee,
anywhere.
--
Cerebus <tmi...@ibm.net>
Timothy J. Miller
cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
> In article <87afa67...@ibm.net>, Timothy J. Miller <tmi...@ibm.net> wrote:
> >Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> >
> >> Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
> >
> > Amen and hallelujah, brother.
>
> All I can say is: "I wish I said that!".
You will, Oscar, you will. <ripples of laughter>
Oh, wait, this is the wrong group. Sorry. <bong> Start again!
--
Cerebus <tmi...@ibm.net>
William P Setzer
cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes::
: All I can say is: "I wish I said that!".
How ironic, given your decision to suspend spam cancelling. I
thought Russ' article made an excellent argument _against_ the
moratorium.
William, news admin frustrated by the lack of tenable spam
control solutions
Timothy J. Miller
William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> writes:
> How ironic, given your decision to suspend spam cancelling. I
> thought Russ' article made an excellent argument _against_ the
> moratorium.
No, actually I agree with the premise of the moratorium. 40% of
traffic as cancels isn't trivial, and certainly can't be maintained in
the long run.
ISPs should keep their own houses clean.
--
Cerebus <tmi...@ibm.net>
Chris Lewis
In article <lzyyaxmvf...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu>,
William P Setzer <William...@ncsu.edu> wrote:
>cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
>: Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>: >
>: > Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
>:
>: All I can say is: "I wish I said that!".
>How ironic, given your decision to suspend spam cancelling. I
>thought Russ' article made an excellent argument _against_ the
>moratorium.
The coincidental timing is fun, but... Russ's rant was why we
work so hard to end spam. Not on individual tactics during the fight.
What you seem to be missing is that the cancel moratorium's _intent_
is to help end spam. The moratorium is a tactical maneuver in the
strategy to end spam. What Russ said (so well) describes _why_ we're
fighting.
--
The rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated.
Support the anti-Spam amendment. Join at http://www.cauce.org/
Anti-spam resources: http://spam.abuse.net
brian moore
On 03 Apr 1998 15:03:03 -0500,
> cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
> : Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> : >
> : > Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
> :
> : All I can say is: "I wish I said that!".
>
> How ironic, given your decision to suspend spam cancelling. I
> thought Russ' article made an excellent argument _against_ the
> moratorium.
No, it made an argument against spamming.
> William, news admin frustrated by the lack of tenable spam
> control solutions
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/antispam.html and
http://www.spamhippo.com/
Both work wonders.
--
Brian Moore Kill A Spammer For Jesus
Sysadmin, C/Perl Hacker
Russ Allbery
William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> writes:
> How ironic, given your decision to suspend spam cancelling. I thought
> Russ' article made an excellent argument _against_ the moratorium.
I was definitely not arguing in favor of spam cancellation. I still don't
like spam cancellation as a mechanism and will happy advocate its complete
abandonment as soon as anything better is viable.
Russ Allbery
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> writes:
> The coincidental timing is fun, but... Russ's rant was why we work so
> hard to end spam.
Actually, it really wasn't about spam at all.
Lionel Lauer
Quoth Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> :
>Lionel Lauer <nos...@sexzilla.net> writes:
>
>> If you have no objections, I'm archiving this one for posterity, as well
>> as for presenting to people who ask me why I bother fighting the
>> spammers & other leeches who'd destroy Usenet with their scrabbling for
>> imaginary dollars.
>
>I have no objections at all. :) Just the request that the name of the
>person to whom I was following up be taken out for archival purposes.
Sure. ;)
Dave Hayes
Russ Allbery wrote:
> Dave Hayes <da...@jetcafe.org> writes:
> > Hi Russ. Of course you won't take any of this personally. :)
Good.
> > Which I would immediately suggest someone create, perhaps the people at
> > Headhunter.net, except that -no one would carry it-. Job offers are only
> > effective when widely distributed, and what you (and many other) admins
> > have been saying is "we won't distribute this".
> I definitely would carry jobs newsgroups that were set up in some fashion
> that was *usable* for my average user. Like I've said, job hunting is a
> big deal to my user population. This is something they *need*. They
> can't use the existing groups; if someone can provide me with groups they
> can use, I would definitely carry them.
Define "useability" for a jobs group.
> > Nonsense! Simple searches are possible in -every- newsreader I've ever
> > seen. You can simply search for a set of keywords that describe what you
> > do, and you come up with articles. If I was trying to find a job, I'd
> > -want- lots and lots of job offers in the same place, so I could be
> > assured that my searches would turn up something interesting.
> But the facts, and we have a lot of factual data on this one, are against
> this. This is *not* what people are doing. They're seeing the volume and
> they're giving up.
That's their fault, then. Or do you disagree with the premise that more
job ads mean more chances of finding a job?
> > Whoa. Yes, I know what this is like. And I flat out -refuse- to "protect
> > these people from the evil villans".
> And if you believe that's what I'm advocating, you've *completely* missed
> the point.
Maybe I have, but that sure sounds like this to me.
> A question for you, Dave: Is it possible to believe, to *truly* believe
> in something, with a passion and intensity and a willingness to defend it
> against anything that would hurt it, without making anyone *specific* into
> the enemy?
As soon as you conceptualize "defense", you have automatically presumed
(and even created) the existance of "attackers". Otherwise there would be
no need for the concept of "defense". "Attackers" are generally enemies...
> And a second question: What makes people more likely to attack other
> people? Having something that they care about, or not having anything
> that they care about?
Depends on your definitions of "care" and "attack".
> I don't hate HeadHunter.NET. I love Usenet. There's a very important
> difference.
Therefore you perceive headhunter.net as "attacking" what you love, which
really nullifies any difference you may think you see. @:-)
--
Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - da...@jetcafe.org
>>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<<
Freedom Knight of Usenet - (NEW!) http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Jeffery J. Leader
Should it be defined differently for different groups? If it isn't
useable in a USENET is text setting, maybe it belongs on the web or
elsewhere. Certainly the jobs stuff belongs on the web (IMO).
If a newsgroup has to be searched and sorted through as if it were a
database, that defeats the intention of having a (relatively)
narrowly-defined topic which the members of the group are interested
in discussing (plus a few groups for meta-issues). News is a
discussion forum, not a database. Binaries are segregated, but people
trading images which interest them is a reasonable extension of the
idea, I suppose. Using a newsgroup as a database (or using DejaNews
via posting to the groups), like WWR was and like the jobs-flooders
are, is absolutely not a reasonable extension of the concept of a
group of people discussing a topic of interest to them (and, as Russ
indicated, forming a community of people who 'know' one another). The
jobs groups are being flooded because it's a convenient mechanism for
these people, and they fear if they don't that they might forfeit a
competitive advantage, not because it's an appropriate use of the
groups.
If you have to search through automatically, it's at best a
questionable use of netnews.
William P Setzer
cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
:
: What you seem to be missing is that the cancel moratorium's _intent_
: is to help end spam. The moratorium is a tactical maneuver in the
: strategy to end spam. What Russ said (so well) describes _why_ we're
: fighting.
No, I understand the intent. I just think it won't work.
Paraphrasing the moratorium (accurately, I hope):
We're going to stop spam cancelling until:
1) The users start to complain to the ISPs about spam,
2) The ISPs start to care about internal spam (before it spools), and
3) The ISPs start to care about external spam (before it spools).
Let's look at these in order:
(1) How many users know how to read headers, know how to use whois, know
about third party web hosting, know enough to care? Not many, and
with the sophistication level going down with each new generation,
less and less. People will do what they did the last time there
was a moratorium--get used to it--because that's the easiest thing
to do.
(2) ISPs can either write it themselves, or use something that's
already out there. The first option is quite unattractive to
ISPs, as they're unlikely to have a news internals guru, let alone
one with the time to whip out such a package. So that leaves the
option of using a package someone else has done.
Using the URL's in the moratorium announcement as a guide, I found
two (for INN): Jeremy Nixon's bofh.patch, and PANIX' News
Gizmo. The bofh.patch doesn't even come close to the plug'n'pray
package necessary for most ISP's to consider it, as otherwise
they're effectively back to the "doing it themselves" stage.
The News Gizmo shows some promise, but is also incomplete.
So what do you think the ISP's probable course of action is?
My guess: nothing.
(3) We're on much better ground here. SpamHippo is available to catch
the stupid spam, although that @#$% splash page you have to fill
out to get it makes me nervous. And there's Cleanfeed to catch a
good bit of the rest. I concede a decent chance that the ISPs
will become responsive in this area.
The potential problem here, though, is maintenance. As new spams
spring up and old spams mutate, how much tweaking will the filters
need, and how much will they (through age) start to let through?
(How much do they already let through? The best filters belong to
the cancellers, and I doubt those will get folded into publically
available filters any time soon.)
You can't reasonably expect each ISP to monitor and analyze the
news spool and individually tweak their filters. The potential
maintenance cost might scare some news admins. It scares me a
bit.
Perhaps I'm wrong; I certainly hope so. Especially about point (2),
which is by far the most important one, where I see the least ISP
compliance. But I can't help feeling that the moratorium represents
an abandonment of Usenet to the wolves, and that frustrates me a
great deal, because I also believe very strongly in what Russ said.
William
Andrew Gierth
>>>>> "William" == William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> writes:
William> 2) The ISPs start to care about internal spam (before it spools), and
William> (2) ISPs can either write it themselves, or use something that's
William> already out there. [...]
William> Using the URL's in the moratorium announcement as a guide, I found
William> two (for INN):
You missed an important point: Cleanfeed and Spamhippo work for
internally-generated spam too.
--
Andrew.
Jeremy
William P Setzer <William...@ncsu.edu> wrote:
> (2) ISPs can either write it themselves, or use something that's
> already out there. The first option is quite unattractive to
> ISPs, as they're unlikely to have a news internals guru, let alone
> one with the time to whip out such a package. So that leaves the
> option of using a package someone else has done.
>
> Using the URL's in the moratorium announcement as a guide, I found
> two (for INN): Jeremy Nixon's bofh.patch,
It's on my webpage, but it's by Andrew Gierth (as the page says).
> and PANIX' News
> Gizmo. The bofh.patch doesn't even come close to the plug'n'pray
> package necessary for most ISP's to consider it, as otherwise
> they're effectively back to the "doing it themselves" stage.
> The News Gizmo shows some promise, but is also incomplete.
>
> So what do you think the ISP's probable course of action is?
> My guess: nothing.
You're overlooking the fact that both Hippo and Cleanfeed are quite
effective against locally-generated spam. If you're running Cleanfeed,
and one of your users tries to spam, it's very likely he's going to
get nailed by the filter.
Yes, you can spam past Cleanfeed. But, it has nailed 100% of the
attempts by local users to spam that I have seen on my system since
I've been filtering.
> (3) We're on much better ground here. SpamHippo is available to catch
> the stupid spam, although that @#$% splash page you have to fill
> out to get it makes me nervous. And there's Cleanfeed to catch a
> good bit of the rest. I concede a decent chance that the ISPs
> will become responsive in this area.
>
> The potential problem here, though, is maintenance. As new spams
> spring up and old spams mutate, how much tweaking will the filters
> need, and how much will they (through age) start to let through?
> (How much do they already let through? The best filters belong to
> the cancellers, and I doubt those will get folded into publically
> available filters any time soon.)
>
> You can't reasonably expect each ISP to monitor and analyze the
> news spool and individually tweak their filters. The potential
> maintenance cost might scare some news admins. It scares me a
> bit.
After installing the filter, all they have to do is upgrade every now
and then, just as with any other software package. There are upgrades
for Cleanfeed rather often right now, because it's still evolving, but
it won't require more than a few minutes per month from a newsadmin.
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
"Who's scruffy-looking?" --Han Solo
Russ Allbery
Dave Hayes <da...@jetcafe.org> writes:
> Define "useability" for a jobs group.
I don't have to. I look at my logs and see if anyone is using them.
> Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
>> But the facts, and we have a lot of factual data on this one, are
>> against this. This is *not* what people are doing. They're seeing the
>> volume and they're giving up.
> That's their fault, then.
No.
> Or do you disagree with the premise that more job ads mean more chances
> of finding a job?
Yes.
>> And if you believe that's what I'm advocating, you've *completely*
>> missed the point.
> Maybe I have, but that sure sounds like this to me.
*shrug*
> As soon as you conceptualize "defense", you have automatically presumed
> (and even created) the existance of "attackers".
You are so completely wrong. And until you can understand that, you will
never understand why I wrote what I wrote, or what it means.
Russ Allbery
William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> writes:
> Yes I am. I was under the impression that nnrpd/filter_post() and
> innd/filter_art() acted independently, at least as far as post
> injection. The fact that they don't pretty much shoots my argument in
> the foot. Oh well, it was a nice foot while it lasted.
It's also pretty trivial to modify filter_art() into filter_post(). It's
hard to save state to do MD5 and the like, but Dave Hayes' exponential
backoff stuff that's being rolled into 1.8 may help with that aspect of
things.
William P Setzer
Jeremy <jer...@exit109.com> writes:
:
: You're overlooking the fact that both Hippo and Cleanfeed are quite
: effective against locally-generated spam.
Yes I am. I was under the impression that nnrpd/filter_post() and
innd/filter_art() acted independently, at least as far as post
injection. The fact that they don't pretty much shoots my argument in
the foot. Oh well, it was a nice foot while it lasted.
William
brian moore
On 05 Apr 1998 00:55:46 -0400,
They -do- act independently. But nnprd has to post through innd just
like everyone else and is therefore bound by the same filters that incoming
feeds get unless you hack things deliberately.
There are tons of extra things you can inflict on your users in nnrpd
that you don't inflict on the world, though. One line of Perl kills
most every MMF attempt from here.
Andrew Gierth
[followups]
>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> writes:
> William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> writes:
>> Yes I am. I was under the impression that nnrpd/filter_post() and
>> innd/filter_art() acted independently, at least as far as post
>> injection. The fact that they don't pretty much shoots my argument in
>> the foot. Oh well, it was a nice foot while it lasted.
Russ> It's also pretty trivial to modify filter_art() into
Russ> filter_post(). It's hard to save state to do MD5 and the like,
Russ> but Dave Hayes' exponential backoff stuff that's being rolled
Russ> into 1.8 may help with that aspect of things.
Not sure how useful that is. The advantage of doing stuff like MD5
body checks in filter_art rather than filter_post is that it
automatically copes with things like multiple connections, multiple
logins (which Mr. 800PHONESEX is very fond of), people who spam
through several ISPs simultaneously, etc.
I'm not happy with the interface for filter_post though. As soon as you
try and extend it, for example to make *all* the headers available rather
than just the standard ones, or to make the headers writable, you end up
with issues over header-case, ordering, and duplicate headers.
I'd prefer to see the headers passed in just as an array, either an
array of strings "Header: value" or an array of arrays, ["Header" "value"].
--
Andrew.
Fluffy
William P Setzer <wse...@babylon5.unity.ncsu.edu> wrote:
: Jeremy <jer...@exit109.com> writes:
: : You're overlooking the fact that both Hippo and Cleanfeed are quite
: : effective against locally-generated spam.
: Yes I am. I was under the impression that nnrpd/filter_post() and
: innd/filter_art() acted independently, at least as far as post
: injection. The fact that they don't pretty much shoots my argument in
: the foot. Oh well, it was a nice foot while it lasted.
They are separate, sort of. You can use filter_post to do some
preliminary checks, but nnrpd ends up using IHAVE to hand the article
to innd anyway. The result is that articles coming in through nnrpd
have to pass through both filters before they're accepted.
John Payne
William P Setzer wrote:
> William, news admin frustrated by the lack of tenable spam
> control solutions
Cleanfeed, spam hippo, nocems... what more do you want?
--
John Payne | VM: JOHN at RTP
IBM Global Services NS | email: jo...@raleigh.ibm.com
OpenNet Services (EMEA) | Intranet http://w3.irc.ibm.com/jpayne
Henrietta Thomas
Sorry I didn't get to this sooner.....
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Sat, 04 Apr 1998 19:44:53 GMT,
JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>Dave Hayes <da...@jetcafe.org> wrote:
>>Define "useability" for a jobs group.
>
>Should it be defined differently for different groups? If it isn't
>useable in a USENET is text setting, maybe it belongs on the web or
>elsewhere. Certainly the jobs stuff belongs on the web (IMO).
Definitely. I believe there is something like 8,000 *jobs* sites on
the web. Most of them stay there where they belong, and invite
people to visit their sites. They do *not* dump their database into
the Usenet newsgroups.
>If a newsgroup has to be searched and sorted through as if it were a
>database, that defeats the intention of having a (relatively)
>narrowly-defined topic which the members of the group are interested
>in discussing (plus a few groups for meta-issues). News is a
>discussion forum, not a database. Binaries are segregated, but people
>trading images which interest them is a reasonable extension of the
>idea, I suppose. Using a newsgroup as a database (or using DejaNews
>via posting to the groups), like WWR was and like the jobs-flooders
>are, is absolutely not a reasonable extension of the concept of a
>group of people discussing a topic of interest to them (and, as Russ
>indicated, forming a community of people who 'know' one another). The
>jobs groups are being flooded because it's a convenient mechanism for
>these people, and they fear if they don't that they might forfeit a
>competitive advantage, not because it's an appropriate use of the
>groups.
Could not agree more. Competition is fierce in the recruiting business,
and some of these people will do anything to make a buck. They do
not see that their activities are inappropriate.
>If you have to search through automatically, it's at best a
>questionable use of netnews.
I talked to a guy about the us.jobs.* groups shortly after they
were rmgrouped. He proposed various schemes which all
ended up with me establishing my own database to take care
of the databases being sent to the newsgroups. It was, he said,
the only way to handle that kind of volume. I agree, but I am not
about to do it. And I don't think anyone else is either. So if we
ever set up any new *jobs* groups in the us.* hierarchy, the
web-based posters will be banned.
Btw, there was recently more discussion in news.admin.hierarchies
that *all* the *jobs* groups should be removed.
Henrietta
>
JunkDTectr
On Tue, 07 Apr 1998 15:55:32 GMT, h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas)
wrote:
>Sorry I didn't get to this sooner.....
>
>In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Sat, 04 Apr 1998 19:44:53 GMT,
>JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>
>>Dave Hayes <da...@jetcafe.org> wrote:
>>>Define "useability" for a jobs group.
>>
>>Should it be defined differently for different groups? If it isn't
>>useable in a USENET is text setting, maybe it belongs on the web or
>>elsewhere. Certainly the jobs stuff belongs on the web (IMO).
>
>Definitely. I believe there is something like 8,000 *jobs* sites on
>the web. Most of them stay there where they belong, and invite
>people to visit their sites. They do *not* dump their database into
>the Usenet newsgroups.
what about :
I counted some 110 of these sequentially numbered ones. One day.
From: Computerwork.com Job Board and Resume Bank
<res...@computerwork.com>
Subject: USA-FL-OTHER PROJECT MANAGER-165068
Newsgroups: alt.computer.consultants.ads
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <eddW.944$aG2.18602@katana>
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 23:05:46 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.12.136.20
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 16:05:46 PST
http://www.computerwork.com/jobboard/usenet.cfm?job_id=165068
----------------------------
nslookup 209.12.136.20
Canonical name: iagdb.resourcecenter.com
Addresses:
209.12.136.20
----------------------------
Internet Association Group (NETBLK-IAGROUP)
7901 Baymeadows Way, Suite 25
Jacksonville, FL 32256
US
Netname: IAGROUP
Netblock: 209.12.136.0 - 209.12.136.255
Maintainer: IAGI
----------------------------
--
My new residence is at Geocities
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/4716
Fight spam, Join CAUCE: http://www.cauce.org
JunkDTectr
I emailed the admin and the recruiter with a complaint. This was
the very polite and professional reply from the admin.
---------------------
|Again, please accept our apologies. After i read your email I checked in to
|the porblem. The update feature of our batch job system had a problem when
|updating and was not releasing the previous jobs data. Unfortunately the
|company that this happened on has 400+ jobs with us. I have made the
|neccesary corrections and hope you will consider our members in future
|employment endevours.
--------------------
My response to him was :
The reason this came about is there is a thread in
NEWS.ADMIN.NET-ABUSE.USENET regarding database dumping in the
*.jobs groups. The discussion includes dropping *.jobs all
together which would mean your service/job would become
unnecessary.
It is quite an issue on several fronts, one, the 'bot glitch' and
another, the mass dumping of ambiguous articles where the purpose
is to saturate the group with ADs for the recruiters. Read some
of the responses I have received from recruiters at my web page.
My development of publicly available filters had been shelved for
a period but it may be time to dust them off. Your organization
would have ended up in these filters.
As I have suggested to other autoposters, Usenet is not bound to
conform to the recruiters/autoposters. Posting of enough
substantively similar articles is considered spam. My filters
address both the recruiter and the autoposter.
Most recruiters/autoposters all claim their articles to be
unique, individual 'job orders', that is not a Usenet issue, what
is a Usenet issue is BI measured spam which applies to
substantively similar articles. My suggestion to them is to use
one generic posting for COBOL/CICS or Oracle or whatever.
----------------
I will un shelf my thoughts on an algorithm to address this,
there is no reason *.job can't or shouldn't work.
If I can come up with a reasonably accurate detection algorithm,
maybe the groups can become usable again.
--
Hal Murray
> As I have suggested to other autoposters, Usenet is not bound to
> conform to the recruiters/autoposters. Posting of enough
> substantively similar articles is considered spam. My filters
> address both the recruiter and the autoposter.
> I will un shelf my thoughts on an algorithm to address this,
> there is no reason *.job can't or shouldn't work.
Do you need smart/complicated filters or just a list
of the recruiter sites dumping their datebase?
Is there anything interesting from those sites?
--
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employers.
Guy Macon
>Do you need smart/complicated filters or just a list
>of the recruiter sites dumping their datebase?
You need smart/complicated filters. If you reject the sites,
they will do whatever they can to defeat your filter.
Simon Karpen
Does anybody know if the RFD/CFV process is the same for removing groups
as it is for adding groups? I think the unmoderated big-8 jobs groups
should eitehr be made moderated (I sure wouldn't want that job), or
removed entirely.
--
Simon Karpen s...@ntrnet.net
#include <std_disclaimer.h> My opinions are my own.
If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
-- Freeman Dyson
JunkDTectr
In article <6ghfjt$f...@src-news.pa.dec.com>, mur...@pa.dec.com says...
>In article <352b85f4...@news.clt.bellsouth.net>, JunkD...@geocities.com (JunkDTectr) writes:
>
>> As I have suggested to other autoposters, Usenet is not bound to
>> conform to the recruiters/autoposters. Posting of enough
>> substantively similar articles is considered spam. My filters
>> address both the recruiter and the autoposter.
>
>> I will un shelf my thoughts on an algorithm to address this,
>> there is no reason *.job can't or shouldn't work.
>
>of the recruiter sites dumping their datebase?
>
I just started filtering addresses and domains, paring it down to
where it was usable. There is a filter for Gravity at my site below.
It's about 6 months old I think. I was going to do one for Agent but
it isn't friendly to importing and exporting filters.
I was going to update it once a month and post an pointer to my page
once a week.
I'd email each recruiter when they were put in the filter. Got some
testimonials from some on my page.
I was going to try to come up with an algorithm to score key words to
make a bot. Some post under multiple names, change paragraph order
.... Got sidetracked with other stuff.
--
My new residence is at Geocities
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/4716/
Fight spam, Join CAUCE: http://www.cauce.org
Bellsouth moved to UUNET backbone, I moved to Mindspring
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Tue, 07 Apr 1998 18:53:09 GMT,
JunkD...@geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
They are not the worst, but they are in the same category. They
collect job listings at their website, then post them to the newsgroups.
A few other names I recall besides headHunter.net: Recruiter's
Online Network, World Wide Recruiters, jobcenter, net-temps,
virtualresume. These are among the heavy hitters. Then there
are smaller agencies, like Hall Kinion, who apparently post their
own ads. The point is that almost all the ads in the *jobs* groups
are posted by, or on behalf of, recruiters, and rarely by the
employers themselves.
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Tue, 07 Apr 1998 20:12:27 GMT,
JunkD...@geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
>I emailed the admin and the recruiter with a complaint. This was
>the very polite and professional reply from the admin.
>
>---------------------
>|Again, please accept our apologies. After i read your email I checked in to
>|the porblem. The update feature of our batch job system had a problem when
>|updating and was not releasing the previous jobs data. Unfortunately the
>|company that this happened on has 400+ jobs with us. I have made the
>|neccesary corrections and hope you will consider our members in future
>|employment endevours.
Sounds like he thinks you are a recruiter or something. :-(
>--------------------
>My response to him was :
>
>The reason this came about is there is a thread in
>NEWS.ADMIN.NET-ABUSE.USENET regarding database dumping in the
>*.jobs groups. The discussion includes dropping *.jobs all
>together which would mean your service/job would become
>unnecessary.
>
>It is quite an issue on several fronts, one, the 'bot glitch' and
>another, the mass dumping of ambiguous articles where the purpose
>is to saturate the group with ADs for the recruiters. Read some
>of the responses I have received from recruiters at my web page.
>My development of publicly available filters had been shelved for
>a period but it may be time to dust them off. Your organization
>would have ended up in these filters.
>
>As I have suggested to other autoposters, Usenet is not bound to
>conform to the recruiters/autoposters. Posting of enough
>substantively similar articles is considered spam. My filters
>address both the recruiter and the autoposter.
>
>Most recruiters/autoposters all claim their articles to be
>unique, individual 'job orders', that is not a Usenet issue, what
>is a Usenet issue is BI measured spam which applies to
>substantively similar articles. My suggestion to them is to use
>one generic posting for COBOL/CICS or Oracle or whatever.
Well, I can't completely agree that the *jobs* articles are spam.
If they were, the despammers would have zapped them long ago.
Even though the accompanying advertising is the same, each
ad *does* apparently represent a separate job opening (although
there really is no way we can verify this). A better description of
the *jobs* ads would be that they are spew. Russ Allbery recently
tracked headHunter.net posting 70 articles per minute.
>----------------
>
>I will un shelf my thoughts on an algorithm to address this,
>there is no reason *.job can't or shouldn't work.
>
>If I can come up with a reasonably accurate detection algorithm,
>maybe the groups can become usable again.
Let me know if you come up with anything that you think might
work. If it's not too much of a hassle, I might be willing to try
it in us.*. The big problem, though, is the volume -- all that
stuff would go to the relays and then onto the mail server at
the moderator's ISP. How do you handle stuff coming in at
70 articles per minute?
Henrietta
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on 9 Apr 1998 17:39:20 GMT,
s...@ns1.ntrnet.net (Simon Karpen) wrote:
>Does anybody know if the RFD/CFV process is the same for removing groups
>as it is for adding groups?
There is no procedure for removing groups in the Big 8 -- or even in alt.*,
for that matter. Old groups never die -- they just get renamed.
>I think the unmoderated big-8 jobs groups
>should eitehr be made moderated (I sure wouldn't want that job), or
>removed entirely.
Moderation would be extremely difficult because of the volume of
submissions. Most of the state-level hierarchies retromoderate by
cancelling posts which don't comply with the charters.
I would prefer to see the global misc.jobs.* groups removed. Some
news administrators have discussed this off and on recently, but none
of them have attempted any action that I know of. If enough news
admins want the groups removed, I think a way would be found to do
that.
Henrietta K. Thomas
us.* hierarchy coordinator
Business: usa...@wwa.com
Personal: h...@wwa.com
JunkDTectr
In article <352dcfb1...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
>Let me know if you come up with anything that you think might
>work. If it's not too much of a hassle, I might be willing to try
>it in us.*. The big problem, though, is the volume -- all that
>stuff would go to the relays and then onto the mail server at
>the moderator's ISP. How do you handle stuff coming in at
>70 articles per minute?
Is us.jobs.contract moderated? I'm not sure if I understand what
you're saying?
Mick Brown
On Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:14:00 GMT, in <352e0d51...@news.wwa.com>
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
] In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on 9 Apr 1998 17:39:20 GMT,
] s...@ns1.ntrnet.net (Simon Karpen) wrote:
]
] >Does anybody know if the RFD/CFV process is the same for removing groups
] >as it is for adding groups?
]
] There is no procedure for removing groups in the Big 8 -- or even in alt.*,
] for that matter. Old groups never die -- they just get renamed.
]
There is no formal procedure for removals outside of renaming base to
base.misc or other renames like one of last years CFVs renamed a
comp.lang.java.* group.
There is an informal procedure for removing moderated groups.
] >I think the unmoderated big-8 jobs groups
] >should eitehr be made moderated (I sure wouldn't want that job), or
] >removed entirely.
]
] Moderation would be extremely difficult because of the volume of
] submissions. Most of the state-level hierarchies retromoderate by
] cancelling posts which don't comply with the charters.
]
I am advocating 1 day expire or nuking the general jobs groups for the site
I act as consulting news admin. misc jobs has 50,000 articles on a 2 day
expire. A recent test download of headers took 2 hours on a 28.8 connection
and was something over 11 megs IIRC.
I think one solution is to rmgroup the misc.jobs groups and setup an
announce group which has a charter restricting posts to 1 post per site per
week. If the agencies posted only 1 ad per week the misc.jobs groups might
be usable for a while yet, but I expect that even if postings were only from
individual job seekers eventually the general jobs groups would be
unreadable. As someone said previously, jobs listings really don't work in
USENET, a search engine on some website is a much better use of bandwidth
and technology.
] I would prefer to see the global misc.jobs.* groups removed. Some
]
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:09:32 -0400,
JunkD...@Geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
>In article <352dcfb1...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
>>Let me know if you come up with anything that you think might
>>work. If it's not too much of a hassle, I might be willing to try
>>it in us.*. The big problem, though, is the volume -- all that
>>stuff would go to the relays and then onto the mail server at
>>the moderator's ISP. How do you handle stuff coming in at
>>70 articles per minute?
>
>Is us.jobs.contract moderated? I'm not sure if I understand what
>you're saying?
All us.jobs.* groups were removed last November. We have no
us.jobs.* groups now, except for those being carried by ISPs who
didn't see or didn't honor my control messages. I have no real
desire to set up new groups until and unless I have a decent
moderation plan which will control the volume without too much
hassle. I can't see myself (or anyone else) processing 10,000
articles a day.
Henrietta
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:05:17 -0400,
mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
>On Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:14:00 GMT, in <352e0d51...@news.wwa.com>
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
about the *jobs* groups......
>] Moderation would be extremely difficult because of the volume of
>] submissions. Most of the state-level hierarchies retromoderate by
>] cancelling posts which don't comply with the charters.
>]
>
>I am advocating 1 day expire or nuking the general jobs groups for the site
>I act as consulting news admin. misc jobs has 50,000 articles on a 2 day
>expire. A recent test download of headers took 2 hours on a 28.8 connection
>and was something over 11 megs IIRC.
Even a one-day expire is probably too much. I'd prefer dropping the groups.
Most ISPs don't want to deal with that kind of volume.
>I think one solution is to rmgroup the misc.jobs groups and setup an
>announce group which has a charter restricting posts to 1 post per site per
>week. If the agencies posted only 1 ad per week the misc.jobs groups might
>be usable for a while yet, but I expect that even if postings were only from
>individual job seekers eventually the general jobs groups would be
>unreadable. As someone said previously, jobs listings really don't work in
>USENET, a search engine on some website is a much better use of bandwidth
>and technology.
And that is where the job listings come from -- web-based databases.
So let them keep their stuff on the web, and we can refer job seekers
to their sites. One thing I am considering for us.* is to set up at least
two groups:
us.job-search.discuss
us.job-search.services
The one group would be for discussion only, and anybody trying to
post jobs there would find themselves nuked. The other would be
for web-based services to post bi-monthly announcements of their
services. This would include outfits like headhunter.net, Recruiter's
Online Network, virtualresume, etc. They could make announcements
and invite people to visit their sites, but they would not be allowed to
post any job listings or resumes.
That's about as far as I am willing to go right now. As long as all the
US jobs are being listed in the global *jobs* groups, I see no real
need to recreate the us.* groups in any manner, shape, or form.
It would only be another place to crosspost.
Henrietta
Zev Sero
On 31 Mar 1998 05:01:34 -0800, Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Hi. You are about to be subjected to a rant.
Hear, hear!
--
Zev Sero Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire meaning
zs...@idt.net merely by appending them to the two other words `God can'.
Nonsense remains nonsense, even when we talk it about God.
- C.S. Lewis
Jeffery J. Leader
h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
> us.job-search.discuss
> us.job-search.services
Given sufficient moderation, some kind of scheme like this (there or
in misc.*) would be good. But moderation seems an imposing task in
this case.
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Mon, 13 Apr 1998 23:40:41 GMT,
JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
I wasn't expecting to moderate either of these groups because
the purpose of moderation would be solely to prevent the posting
of job listings, and I was thinking the threat of cancellation would
be sufficient to control that. I may change my mind on that. It should
be no big problem to set up a moderation program where a human
would review first submissions, reject all job listings with a warning
note, and then "blacklist" repeat offenders. I see two problems with
this:
1. How do I prevent the moderator from making content-based
judgments of allowable posts? Yes, I know you can restrict the
moderator by the charter, but that may not be enough.
2. What happens when the autoposters keep sending articles
anyway? Yes, I know all this stuff will be dropped on the floor
or returned to sender, but it *still* creates a burden on the
moderator and his ISP's mail server. I would not wish that
burden on anyone.
Anyway, I will give it a try and see what I can do.
Henrietta
Jeffery J. Leader
h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>no big problem to set up a moderation program where a human
>would review first submissions, reject all job listings
Have you seen the stats on how many of these are posted per day? If
some idiot sets post to auto, you'd have trouble. You might think
they'd stop after getting 100% rejections for a week or two but I am
not sure that this squares with experience...
>1. How do I prevent the moderator from making content-based
>judgments of allowable posts?
Why on earth would you want to do that?
>2. What happens when the autoposters keep sending articles
>anyway?
Yes, my point exactly. It's possible a clue in th eright direction
would work, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Tue, 14 Apr 1998 18:25:04 GMT,
JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>>no big problem to set up a moderation program where a human
>>would review first submissions, reject all job listings
>
>Have you seen the stats on how many of these are posted per day? If
>some idiot sets post to auto, you'd have trouble.
Not really stats, but (a) I spent a lot of time counting articles in the
us.jobs.* groups last year, (b) Jeremy once counted 11,000 articles
coming out of net-temps one right after the other, and (c) Russ
Allbery just recently clocked headhunter.net at 70 articles per
minute. 99.9% of the articles to *jobs* groups are auto-posted
by web-based recruiters and posting services.
>You might think
>they'd stop after getting 100% rejections for a week or two but I am
>not sure that this squares with experience...
I don't know what would happen with rejections. They might just go
back and clog up the sender's mailbox, but then again, they might
not. Net-temps uses a return address of nos...@net-temps.com,
which means anything you send to them goes straight to their
bit bucket.
>>1. How do I prevent the moderator from making content-based
>>judgments of allowable posts?
>
>Why on earth would you want to do that?
The discussion group is supposed to be for discussion, and I want
to leave people alone to discuss without someone passing judgment
on their posts. All us.* groups will have a Newsgroup Host to keep
an eye on things. That should be enough to help keep the noise
level down.
>>2. What happens when the autoposters keep sending articles
>>anyway?
>
>Yes, my point exactly. It's possible a clue in th eright direction
>would work, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
Me either. And that's why I decided not to try and deal with
the web-based posters at all.
Henrietta
Mick Brown
On Mon, 13 Apr 1998 16:44:21 GMT, in <35323b5d...@news.wwa.com>
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
] In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:05:17 -0400,
] mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
]
] >On Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:14:00 GMT, in <352e0d51...@news.wwa.com>
] >news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
]
] about the *jobs* groups......
]
] >] Moderation would be extremely difficult because of the volume of
] >] submissions. Most of the state-level hierarchies retromoderate by
] >] cancelling posts which don't comply with the charters.
] >]
] >
] >I am advocating 1 day expire or nuking the general jobs groups for the site
] >I act as consulting news admin. misc jobs has 50,000 articles on a 2 day
] >expire. A recent test download of headers took 2 hours on a 28.8 connection
] >and was something over 11 megs IIRC.
]
] Even a one-day expire is probably too much. I'd prefer dropping the groups.
] Most ISPs don't want to deal with that kind of volume.
]
If the groups are removed by tale or other hierarchy maintainers, it is an
entirely different matter than if the ISP drops them unilaterally. If I was
in charge and I didn't have to consider things like customer complaints I'd
nuke the worst offender groups right away. Bumping the expire to daily or
twice daily is much less likely to cause customer complaints, or bring up
(misguided) charges of censorship. My position is advisory only.
I could prune the misc.jobs.* and biz.jobs.* to a very manageable size by
restricting the top 10 posters domains to 1 post per day. As a guess 35 to
50% of the headers were headhunter.net and the other top 9 to 15 posters
accounted for almost all the remainder. I am sure that only 1% (500 to 550
posts) in those groups had from line matches totalling 3 or fewer.
I last examined jobs groups on that server some time around 1992 or 1993
when the news server was installed. IIRC there were about 800 to 1000
articles and the expires were set to about 9 days to 2 weeks. It had a lot
of jobs ads then, but they were more like the old agency newspaper ads
which listed about 30 jobs per article.
Trying to sort through the misc.jobs.offered group was mind numbing then.
Currently trying to find something in that group is utterly stupefying.
... snipped
] ... One thing I am considering for us.* is to set up at least two groups:
]
] us.job-search.discuss
] us.job-search.services
]
] The one group would be for discussion only, and anybody trying to
] post jobs there would find themselves nuked. The other would be
] for web-based services to post bi-monthly announcements of their
] services. This would include outfits like headhunter.net, Recruiter's
] Online Network, virtualresume, etc. They could make announcements
] and invite people to visit their sites, but they would not be allowed to
] post any job listings or resumes.
]
Sounds good. Sounds like something that will require some sort of robomod.
] That's about as far as I am willing to go right now. As long as all the
] US jobs are being listed in the global *jobs* groups, I see no real
] need to recreate the us.* groups in any manner, shape, or form.
] It would only be another place to crosspost.
]
If I could set the crosspost filters to G5 (no articles crossposted to 6 or
more groups) I think the misc.jobs.* biz.jobs.* and sf*.jobs.* and
bay*.jobs.* would only occupy 30% to 50% of their current spool space.
-- Mick
JunkDTectr
In article <3534d54c...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
>In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Tue, 14 Apr 1998 18:25:04 GMT,
>JeffL...@MindSpring.com (Jeffery J. Leader) wrote:
>
>>h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>>>no big problem to set up a moderation program where a human
>>>would review first submissions, reject all job listings
>>
>>Have you seen the stats on how many of these are posted per day? If
>>some idiot sets post to auto, you'd have trouble.
>
>Not really stats, but (a) I spent a lot of time counting articles in the
>us.jobs.* groups last year, (b) Jeremy once counted 11,000 articles
>coming out of net-temps one right after the other, and (c) Russ
>Allbery just recently clocked headhunter.net at 70 articles per
>minute. 99.9% of the articles to *jobs* groups are auto-posted
>by web-based recruiters and posting services.
>
>>You might think
>>they'd stop after getting 100% rejections for a week or two but I am
>>not sure that this squares with experience...
>
>I don't know what would happen with rejections. They might just go
>back and clog up the sender's mailbox, but then again, they might
>not. Net-temps uses a return address of nos...@net-temps.com,
>which means anything you send to them goes straight to their
>bit bucket.
I was CC'd on some emails from several recruiters to their posting
services after a complaint of excessive posting, the recruiters turned
the screws on the posting service, telling them to straighten up or
they would pull out. Recruiters view their reputation is an important
issue especially when I started talking about 'publicly available
filters'.
Posting services act as an agent of the recruiter and as such I hold
the recruiter responsible for their agents activity. Notify them,
they have the economic power to make it different.
Lots of these recruiters are 'recruited' by these database posters and
don't know from Usenet. I posted a facetious reply to a thread and
BOOM, these guys were spamming me wanting me to 'list' my jobs with
them.
>>>1. How do I prevent the moderator from making content-based
>>>judgments of allowable posts?
>>
>>Why on earth would you want to do that?
>
>The discussion group is supposed to be for discussion, and I want
>to leave people alone to discuss without someone passing judgment
>on their posts. All us.* groups will have a Newsgroup Host to keep
>an eye on things. That should be enough to help keep the noise
>level down.
>
>>>2. What happens when the autoposters keep sending articles
>>>anyway?
>>
>>Yes, my point exactly. It's possible a clue in th eright direction
>>would work, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
>
>Me either. And that's why I decided not to try and deal with
>the web-based posters at all.
--
Jeremy
Henrietta Thomas <h...@wwa.com> wrote:
> Not really stats, but (a) I spent a lot of time counting articles in the
> us.jobs.* groups last year, (b) Jeremy once counted 11,000 articles
> coming out of net-temps one right after the other, and (c) Russ
> Allbery just recently clocked headhunter.net at 70 articles per
> minute.
Headhunter.net is very bad. I reject everything they post outright,
and I've seen over 12,000 in a day when I've thought to count.
So far today, 9181. Yesterday in total, 11496.
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
"...by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
--Russ Allbery
Mick Brown
On Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:53:41 GMT, in <352fa56...@news.wwa.com>
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
] In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:09:32 -0400,
] JunkD...@Geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
]
] >In article <352dcfb1...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
] >>Let me know if you come up with anything that you think might
] >>work. If it's not too much of a hassle, I might be willing to try
] >>it in us.*. The big problem, though, is the volume -- all that
] >>stuff would go to the relays and then onto the mail server at
] >>the moderator's ISP. How do you handle stuff coming in at
] >>70 articles per minute?
] >
] >Is us.jobs.contract moderated? I'm not sure if I understand what
] >you're saying?
]
If you have a cooperative ISP handling the moderator relay for us.* or route
the us.jobs.* to another cooperative relay you can use procmail or another
agent hanging off the SMTP or other mail agent to nuke abusive sites before
they hit the moderator box.
Some <quote>ISPs<unquote> have web forms to do this sort of thing on a user
installable basis. For instance newsguy.com and I believe whiteice.com.
-- Mick
Russ Allbery
Mick Brown <mick....@super.zippo.com> writes:
> If you have a cooperative ISP handling the moderator relay for us.* or
> route the us.jobs.* to another cooperative relay you can use procmail or
> another agent hanging off the SMTP or other mail agent to nuke abusive
> sites before they hit the moderator box.
We're talking about incoming article volumes hitting peaks of 70 posts per
minute or more. sendmail is going to have a hard time *forking* that
fast. That's the level at which you have to resort to rewrite rules or
even blackhole routing.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Wed, 15 Apr 1998 17:20:11 -0400,
JunkD...@Geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
>In article <3534d54c...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
about moderating heavy volume *jobs* groups......
>>I don't know what would happen with rejections. They might just go
>>back and clog up the sender's mailbox, but then again, they might
>>not. Net-temps uses a return address of nos...@net-temps.com,
>>which means anything you send to them goes straight to their
>>bit bucket.
>
>I was CC'd on some emails from several recruiters to their posting
>services after a complaint of excessive posting, the recruiters turned
>the screws on the posting service, telling them to straighten up or
>they would pull out. Recruiters view their reputation is an important
>issue especially when I started talking about 'publicly available
>filters'.
I know of one case where the service admonished a poster for
posting the wrong type of article to a regional newsgroup.
>Posting services act as an agent of the recruiter and as such I hold
>the recruiter responsible for their agents activity. Notify them,
>they have the economic power to make it different.
They also have the right, in most cases, to set the agenda
themselves. They indicate to the agent where they want
their articles posted and they have the authority to schedule
repeat announcements themselves. So, I think I need to do
both -- contact the recruiters and their posting agents to see
if I can get the posting level down. That is an awful lot of
letter writing, though.
>Lots of these recruiters are 'recruited' by these database posters and
>don't know from Usenet. I posted a facetious reply to a thread and
>BOOM, these guys were spamming me wanting me to 'list' my jobs with
>them.
I am not surprised. I posted notices of newsgroup removal in the
us.jobs.* groups, and received a number of interesting offers from
people wanting to help me do a better recruiting job.
Henrietta
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Wed, 15 Apr 1998 15:02:01 -0400,
mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
>On Mon, 13 Apr 1998 16:44:21 GMT, in <35323b5d...@news.wwa.com>
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>
>] In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:05:17 -0400,
>] mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
>] >I am advocating 1 day expire or nuking the general jobs groups for the site
>] >I act as consulting news admin. misc jobs has 50,000 articles on a 2 day
>] >expire. A recent test download of headers took 2 hours on a 28.8 connection
>] >and was something over 11 megs IIRC.
>]
>] Even a one-day expire is probably too much. I'd prefer dropping the groups.
>] Most ISPs don't want to deal with that kind of volume.
>]
>
>If the groups are removed by tale or other hierarchy maintainers, it is an
>entirely different matter than if the ISP drops them unilaterally.
Well, a number of ISPs are doing exactly that -- dropping the *jobs*
groups unilaterally because of the heavy volume.
>If I was
>in charge and I didn't have to consider things like customer complaints I'd
>nuke the worst offender groups right away. Bumping the expire to daily or
>twice daily is much less likely to cause customer complaints, or bring up
>(misguided) charges of censorship. My position is advisory only.
Each ISP is entitled to set its own expiration times, but to "nuke the
worst offender groups" in the Big 8, somebody would have to post
an RFD (Request for Discussion) and a vote would have to be
conducted before tale would even consider issuing an rmgroup.
>
>I could prune the misc.jobs.* and biz.jobs.* to a very manageable size by
>restricting the top 10 posters domains to 1 post per day. As a guess 35 to
>50% of the headers were headhunter.net and the other top 9 to 15 posters
>accounted for almost all the remainder. I am sure that only 1% (500 to 550
>posts) in those groups had from line matches totalling 3 or fewer.
At the rate of one a day, they would *never* get all their job listings
posted. And if you have a rule, you have to apply it to everyone across
the board. A rule of one post a day would defeat the purpose of the
autoposters.
IIRC, Chris Gunn *did* try to moderate biz.jobs.offered, but gave up
and the group was removed. I do not know if he tried to implement
anything like what you suggest.
[snip].....
>] ... One thing I am considering for us.* is to set up at least two groups:
>]
>] us.job-search.discuss
>] us.job-search.services
>]
>] The one group would be for discussion only, and anybody trying to
>] post jobs there would find themselves nuked. The other would be
>] for web-based services to post bi-monthly announcements of their
>] services. This would include outfits like headhunter.net, Recruiter's
>] Online Network, virtualresume, etc. They could make announcements
>] and invite people to visit their sites, but they would not be allowed to
>] post any job listings or resumes.
>]
>
>Sounds good. Sounds like something that will require some sort of robomod.
Yes, it will. Combined human and robomoderation.
>] That's about as far as I am willing to go right now. As long as all the
>] US jobs are being listed in the global *jobs* groups, I see no real
>] need to recreate the us.* groups in any manner, shape, or form.
>] It would only be another place to crosspost.
>]
>
>If I could set the crosspost filters to G5 (no articles crossposted to 6 or
>more groups) I think the misc.jobs.* biz.jobs.* and sf*.jobs.* and
>bay*.jobs.* would only occupy 30% to 50% of their current spool space.
We have made a G5 rule for the us.* hierarchy. Moderators can
enforce this vigorously, and Newsgroup Hosts will be asked to
jawbone people about it. But in the *jobs* groups, I would be even
more strict -- I would limit them to the national group plus the local
group where the job is located, and forbid posting to the global
groups or to any hierarchies outside the United States.
Henrietta
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Thu, 16 Apr 1998 02:29:18 -0400,
mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
>On Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:53:41 GMT, in <352fa56...@news.wwa.com>
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>
>] In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:09:32 -0400,
>] JunkD...@Geocities.com (JunkDTectr) wrote:
>]
>] >In article <352dcfb1...@news.wwa.com>, h...@wwa.com says...
>] >>Let me know if you come up with anything that you think might
>] >>work. If it's not too much of a hassle, I might be willing to try
>] >>it in us.*. The big problem, though, is the volume -- all that
>] >>stuff would go to the relays and then onto the mail server at
>] >>the moderator's ISP. How do you handle stuff coming in at
>] >>70 articles per minute?
>] >
>] >Is us.jobs.contract moderated? I'm not sure if I understand what
>] >you're saying?
>]
>
>If you have a cooperative ISP handling the moderator relay for us.* or route
>the us.jobs.* to another cooperative relay you can use procmail or another
>agent hanging off the SMTP or other mail agent to nuke abusive sites before
>they hit the moderator box.
The relay is at UUnet, and I don't know if they would do such a thing.
I would have to ask David Lawrence if that is possible, or even if they
think it is a good idea. It certainly would prevent their own mailbox
from getting clogged up with this stuff.
>Some <quote>ISPs<unquote> have web forms to do this sort of thing on a user
>installable basis. For instance newsguy.com and I believe whiteice.com.
I might look into that to find out how it works.
Henrietta
Russ Allbery
Howard Goldstein <hgol...@mpcs.com> writes:
> And this what happened with fl.jobs.* shortly after it was turned on.
> (fl.jobs.* are all robot moderated at two sites, here and in Miami, with
> submission address here and I distribute it to a bot on another local
> system and a slowish Miami system) I see bursts for a couple of minutes
> at a time to 120 posts per minute from the morning database dumpers.
> Sendmail holds up ok under the load provided it can shake off the forked
> processes quickly enough, something it couldn't do when the aliases
> entry caused yet another fork to remail via SMTP the item to Miami. We
> started virtually DOSsing Miami, and that caused us to get virtually
> DOSsed via resource exhaustion.
The short version of this lesson, I think (despite the fact that you've
found workarounds) is that moderating in place is a major mistake. If
someone really wants to tackle the jobs newsgroup problem, they'd be
well-advised to create new moderated groups and just delete the old ones.
Chances are a lot of the jobs autoposters won't even notice and will just
keep posting to the old ones.
Mick Brown
On Thu, 16 Apr 1998 17:04:44 GMT, in <353626a9...@news.wwa.com>
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
] IIRC, Chris Gunn *did* try to moderate biz.jobs.offered, but gave up
] and the group was removed. I do not know if he tried to implement
] anything like what you suggest.
That's good news. I must have missed the official rmgroups. I see the biz
FAQ does not have any jobs groups.
I can probably nuke a lot of redundant link entries for biz.jobs.offered at
25,000 articles per day. Given that most the biz.jobs.offered are
crossposted into misc.jobs.offered or another jobs group It won't actually
nuke a lot of articles.
Top 15 groups by article count crossposts *NOT* accounted for. Jobs and
atheism are more prolific than the majority of the sex groups. (Skewed
counts because of differing expire times.)
55653 biz.jobs.offered
42122 misc.jobs.offered
30174 alt.jobs
21568 misc.jobs
14494 misc.jobs.contract
13547 alt.mag.playboy
8714 alt.sex
8997 ba.jobs.offered
7030 news.lists.filters
6935 alt.sex.pictures.female
6690 tx.jobs
4591 alt.games.final-fantasy
4106 ne.jobs
3816 alt.atheism
Henrietta Thomas
In news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on Thu, 16 Apr 1998 20:24:33 -0400,
mick....@super.zippo.com (Mick Brown) wrote:
>On Thu, 16 Apr 1998 17:04:44 GMT, in <353626a9...@news.wwa.com>
>news.admin.net-abuse.usenet h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>
>] IIRC, Chris Gunn *did* try to moderate biz.jobs.offered, but gave up
>] and the group was removed. I do not know if he tried to implement
>] anything like what you suggest.
>
>That's good news. I must have missed the official rmgroups. I see the biz
>FAQ does not have any jobs groups.
I can send you the biz.* checkgroups list if you like. I'm pretty sure
I have it saved on my hard disk in control: checkgroups.
>I can probably nuke a lot of redundant link entries for biz.jobs.offered at
>25,000 articles per day. Given that most the biz.jobs.offered are
>crossposted into misc.jobs.offered or another jobs group It won't actually
>nuke a lot of articles.
But it *will* reduce the crossposts and correct the misconception
people have that biz.jobs.offered still exists. That would be most
helpful.
>Top 15 groups by article count crossposts *NOT* accounted for. Jobs and
>atheism are more prolific than the majority of the sex groups. (Skewed
>counts because of differing expire times.)
>
> 55653 biz.jobs.offered
> 42122 misc.jobs.offered
> 30174 alt.jobs
> 21568 misc.jobs
> 14494 misc.jobs.contract
> 13547 alt.mag.playboy
> 8714 alt.sex
> 8997 ba.jobs.offered
> 7030 news.lists.filters
> 6935 alt.sex.pictures.female
> 6690 tx.jobs
> 4591 alt.games.final-fantasy
> 4106 ne.jobs
> 3816 alt.atheism
VERY interesting. We really need to do something about
those *jobs* groups.
Henrietta
Jeffery J. Leader
h...@wwa.com (Henrietta Thomas) wrote:
>I posted notices of newsgroup removal in the
>us.jobs.* groups, and received a number of interesting offers from
>people wanting to help me do a better recruiting job.
Sheesh. I posted on spam to misc.writing (IIRC) one and had a similar
experience. Is this not helping their case or what? (I know, I know,
that's hardly reason enough...)