(AFS) FAQ Newsgroup Posting Convention
Newsgroup Poster
additions, improvements, comments, etc etc are welcome.
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The Problem:
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Spam...
Annoying...
How to avoid it??
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The solution of the day:
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For those of us who reside in the newsgroup alt.fan.surak, we've
come up with a convention that allows some (most?) of us to filter
out the spam.
The convention is to use "(AFS)" as the prefix in the Subject: line
of any posting made to to the newsgroup alt.fan.surak.
By using this prefix, newsreader programs that have a filtering
facility can be set to keep/mark/download those postings with the
prefix, and to delete/mark-as-read all postings that do not have
that prefix. This is a keep-filter strategy, and seems to be the
most effective at blocking spam and newsgroup flooding attacks.
NOTE THIS:
However, it requires the mutual cooperation of all posters to the
newsgroup to follow the same prefix convention. If someone makes a
posting without the prefix, the other readers who have their filters
set up will not see the posting.
Most newsreader programs these days have a basic filtering capability
but sometimes limited to either author or subject. Using a subject
line prefix makes use of this most common denominator.
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My newsreader doesn't have a filtering capability
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If your newsreader program does not have a filtering capability, or
you perceive a need for a more powerful filter tool, one that has
been mentioned favorably in the news.admin.net-abuse.* newsgroups is
called "nfilter", and described at www.nfilter.org.
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Setting up a keep-filter in Microsoft Outlook Express:
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This is what such a filter would be in Microsoft Outlook Express
(which is installed by default on the Win* machine here). I'm given
to understand that Netscape has a similar facility, but since I
don't have Netscape installed, I can't readily give an example.
So, for Outlook Express, a filter would be something like this:
Tools -> Message Rules -> News
(New Rule if you already have rules, or Rule#1 if you don't)
check box: in the newsgroup -> alt.fan.surak
check box: where the subject line contains -> "(AFS)" (without quotes)
check box: mark it for download
Okay
New Rule (Rule #2):
check box: in the newsgroup -> alt.fan.surak
check box: where the subject line contains
-> "(AFS)" (without quotes)
-> Options -> line does _not_ contain the string
check box: delete
Okay
And simply because of too many years of writing programs, for the
sake of completeness:
New Rule (Rule#3):
check box: in the newsgroup -> alt.fan.surak
check box: stop processing rules
Okay
Expressing all this somewhat more simply, in what might be passable
English:
in the newsgroup alt.fan.surak, if the subject line has "(AFS)"
then download the message, otherwise delete the message.
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Other sources:
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The Usenet archive that was on DejaNews is now located at
groups.google.com. If you use the advanced search page on the web,
then you can go directly to their copy of newsgroup traffic,
and follow things from there. Google seems to have a fairly
decent filter in place, so at least the most blantant spam
shouldn't be present in their archives.
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The Vulcan-L mailing list:
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The Vulcan-L mailing list is echoed into the alt.fan.surak
newsgroup. The list echo has used the Subject:-line (AFS) prefix
for some time.
For those of you who read the newsgroup with newsreader programs
that have additional filtering capabilities, note the the list
echo provides a number of header fields that can be used to
identify postings from the mailing list. These fields include the
NNTP-Posting-Host, Organization, X-Forward-From, Message-Id,
and the format of the From: address of the author of the post.
Note that the Message-Id has a particular format, having an
embedded number of the post in the mailing list message archive.
This Message-Id also allows direct access via the Google advanced
search function.
However, note that these fields are relevant _only_ for postings
echoed from the Vulcan-L mailing list. Posters who follow along
from the newsgroup, don't have these additional fields. Meaning,
if the newsreader filters are set for these extra fields, you'll
see mailing list traffic, and that's all. Caveat Reader.
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Other alternatives
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Usenet newsgroup servers are a distributed-use technology. ISP's,
companies, schools, etc either run their own servers, or outsource
access to someone else. Consequently, the quality of expertise in
running a news server is dependent on the site. And so also the
ability of a site to keep its news servers free of spam. Some sites
are very good at it. Others aren't.
If you're seeing spam, particularly in any large quantity, it might
be a viable alternative to seek another news server. These days
(writing this in August 2001), there are a number of commerical
news sources. Just like an ISP mailbox, you can subscribe to a
news provider. These are the same providers who outsource their
service to a number of ISP's and schools and others who don't have
the time or expertise or resources to maintain an operational
news server.
For alternative news sources, you might investigate giganews, airnews,
newsguy, newsread, supernews, and their competitors. Each has a
web page (www.<name>.com) that give details. Again, the quality
will vary, but these being commerical servers, it's not really in
their interest to carry traffic, such as spam, that their customers
don't want.
The site newsreaders.com has a list of Usenet providers. Look under
the subject of "peering" and "individual subscriptions".
--
Randall Raemon
shikahrsoho.com, email to rlr+usenet or owner-vulcan-l