Upcoming Wired story
Jim Kingdon
> half-hour about Altopia and the various flamewars surrounding it in the
> net-abuse groups
One of the things I like about usenet is that I can be a productive
member of usenet, even moderately plugged into places like net.*,
news.*, and us.config, where such things might be discussed, and still
have only a dim recollection of what Altopia is.
I like that about usenet. I'm glad someone is worrying about Altopia
(whatever it is). I'm also glad that someone isn't me :-).
pyrrhic defeat
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>For those who haven't followed the arguments, it's alt.net, the ISP that
>has a policy of allowing self-approval to moderated groups (something I
>definitely disagree with) and which refuses to kick people off their
>systems for "libel" (something that I'm generally sympathetic towards).
>And that in general has some non-standard stances on abuse issues, but is
>pretty solid with respect to spam.
>They have, of course, attracted Grubor, Boursy, meowers, and the like, and
>therefore are a target of calls for a UDP. Big regular flamewars in the
>net-abuse groups.
Chris Caputo should put his money where his mouth is and host as many
anti-$cientologists as possible (if he isn't already).
rone
--
There is a little Mike Zeares in all of us, waiting to go off and massacre a
village for our own little personal cause.
- Tjames Madison <tja...@pigdog.org>
Jeremy
> Just got off the phone from talking to a Wired reporter for about a
> half-hour about Altopia and the various flamewars surrounding it in the
> net-abuse groups, so expect a story from Wired on the subject before too
> much longer.
I answered questions for him too. On the record, against my better
judgement, but hey, it's never bad to have reporters who owe you favors.
> Not sure how well I managed to clarify, given the fuzzy and complex nature
> of the issue. We'll see. :)
I sent him in your direction, figuring he needed to talk to someone
reasonable. :)
Wonder if he interviewed Guy?
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
"Bunch of savages in this town!" --Dante ("Clerks")
Frisco Del Rosario
> Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> > expect a story from Wired on [Altopia] before too
> > much longer.
I'd never heard of Altopia, either. Self-approval in moderated groups? HAW HAW!
> hey, it's never bad to have reporters who owe you favors.
That's like saying it's never bad to have a rock owe you blood. :)
--
Newsgroup reviews and beyond -- http://www.best.com/~cattekin/
Mining Company Guide to Usenet -- http://usenet.miningco.com/
Todd Michel McComb
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>So far, it's only been an annoyance in a few groups where the
>posters have grudges against the moderators.
We had some guy doing it in soc.history.moderated for a while, for
no apparent reason. We ignored him and he went away.
>Chris Caputo's stance is that moderation is relying on fake security
>and that the security of moderation should be fixed instead.
I don't agree with this. I don't like the implication that people
don't have the simple personal honor to go along with the guidelines.
I could stand up in the middle of the local school board meeting
too, and make a scene, and it's not like they have police sitting
there waiting to throw me out... but I don't do it, nor does anyone
else.
I feel that adding security is essentially validating what these
people do, and I don't want to give them that satisfaction.
Jim Kingdon
> and approval and everything else that's been on an honor system. We seem
> to have too many people around for an honor system to continue to
> function.
My reactions to this thread were interesting. My first reaction to
"moderation should be non-forgeable" was the traditional usenet one:
no, no if you try to lock everything down people will just find
another way to rebel and you need to use social means.
But then as the thread progressed, it seemed a bit more like cancels
(in which I don't really see the point of unauthenticated cancels, at
least not any more).
And now I find myself thinking along the lines of "well, if you need
to complain to the ISP, or think you do, on a regular basis then
probably there should be some more systematic way of regulating it".
Or something like that. I'm not sure whether I think that or not.
Does Altopia actively encourage their users to self-approve (e.g. via
some "you know, you don't need to ...." web page or something), or do
they just say they won't take action on the matter? May be kind of
splitting hairs, since word has gotten around to some extent about
this policy, but it might affect what I think and/or how one might
react.
sw
>Todd Michel McComb <mcc...@medieval.org> writes:
>> I don't agree with this. I don't like the implication that people don't
>> have the simple personal honor to go along with the guidelines.
>
>
>Although this is happening all over Usenet, with cancels and supersedes
>and approval and everything else that's been on an honor system. We seem
>to have too many people around for an honor system to continue to
>function.
But most people DON'T have a sense of honor (why is everyone looking at me
like that...) - most people have NEVER had a sense of honor.
The only way to get people to play nice is to have a big man with a stick
standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
--
"Ideas are not usually a good thing..." -- Tom Russell, describing RACC.
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make
my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." -- Voltaire
Jim Kingdon
> standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
Huh? In the _usenet_ context?
That is always the way the fidonet/BBS culture worked (well, more like
a lot of little bosses each with a little stick, as often as not
directed against the other sticks). But usenet is notable for the
relative absence of big bosses. Whether this is a bug or a feature is
a matter of opinion no doubt, but I don't expect it to change. I
mean, I don't see how it could.
sw
>> The only way to get people to play nice is to have a big man with a stick
>> standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
>
>Huh? In the _usenet_ context?
Yes. The reason many (but, thankfully, not most) people don't play nice is
the lack of people with sticks around to hit them.
>That is always the way the fidonet/BBS culture worked (well, more like
>a lot of little bosses each with a little stick, as often as not
>directed against the other sticks). But usenet is notable for the
>relative absence of big bosses. Whether this is a bug or a feature is
>a matter of opinion no doubt, but I don't expect it to change. I
>mean, I don't see how it could.
After I take over the world, I'll have my Legions of Terror gather all the
news-admins together in one room and have them fix it. Which is about the
only way things would ever get changed. ;>
Todd Michel McComb
>The only way to get people to play nice is to have a big man with
>a stick standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
s/people/some people/
And those aren't the people I'm willing to play with. If they want
to get their jollies by thinking they're irritating me, well, that
doesn't make me any more anxious to play with them whether we play
with sticks or not.
Jim Kingdon
> news-admins together in one room and have them fix it. Which is about the
> only way things would ever get changed. ;>
Been there, done that.
The news admins decided that it wasn't much fun any more and gave up.
There Is No Cabal.
Then again, I don't know if anyone has yet tried to use Legions of
Terror to round them up ;-).
sw
Right. This time, they'd have a choice between working together to fix and
being taken out back and used for target practice. ;>
Any problem can be solved by the use of sufficient numbers of Legions of
Terror.
Jim Kingdon
> Terror.
Speaking of which, is this the secret to Afterburner's success?
I mean, we all know about Afterburner and Minions, but one wonders if
they are really backed up by an innumerable number of Sooper Sekrit
Legions of Terror (Sooper Sekrit becuase the most powerful weapons are
surprise and, er, uh, surprise and... well surprise and something).
Jim Kingdon
> users when they do it and often succeeds in talking them out of it.
It would seem to me that someone with this attitude would generally
have less abuse than your garden-variety phone-company-owned ISP,
which tend to have tough policies but are fairly slow to enforce them.
Judge ISPs by the results, not by their policies.
All the cries of "UDP Altopia" serve as kind of abuse magnet, a
marketing vehicle if you will, which encourages abusers and/or people
who might be perceived as abusers to go there. Same effect we saw
with AGIS and email spam in the fall of 1997, most obviously (although
I guess that was also AGIS's own publicity). I'm sure there is a
better example (probably pre-AGIS).
Now, Altopia does mention their policy on the web
(http://www.altopia.com/polfaq.htm) which may also tend to be an abuse
magnet. Hmm. Interesting set of issues. If Altopia were quieter
about it, they probably wouldn't catch as much flack, but then again
I've never been too much of a fan of security through obscurity. On
aesthetic grounds if nothing else.
Peter da Silva
Jim Kingdon <kin...@panix7.panix.com> wrote:
>> No, they just say they won't take action. Chris even usually talks to his
>> users when they do it and often succeeds in talking them out of it.
>It would seem to me that someone with this attitude would generally
>have less abuse than your garden-variety phone-company-owned ISP,
>which tend to have tough policies but are fairly slow to enforce them.
Maybe, but the folks attacking alt.life.suck from alt.net, with massive
spillover from alt.animals.dolphins, are showing no sign of letting up.
>Judge ISPs by the results, not by their policies.
I am. Altopia has been a haven for non-spamming abusers for years.
--
This is The Reverend Peter da Silva's Boring Sig File - there are no references
to Wolves, Kibo, Discordianism, or The Church of the Subgenius in this document
> We must make sure our momentum aligns with our value-added distribution! <
Brian L. Naylor
I think you're thinking of Pete Ehlke; he has the Sony Black-Winged
Minions of Death at his beck and call. (lawyers! eek!)
As far as Afterburner's success goes, I don't think he *needs* any
wussy Legions of Terror to back him up- he's a pretty damned scary
apparition in his own right. Legions would be but frosting on the
shuggoth.
--
Brian L. Naylor Q: When are 8 spaces only 3 calories?
br...@sackheads.org A: When they're a Tab.
http://www.sackheads.org/bnaylor/
Jeremy
> Peter da Silva <pe...@taronga.com> writes:
>
>> Maybe, but the folks attacking alt.life.suck from alt.net, with massive
>> spillover from alt.animals.dolphins, are showing no sign of letting up.
>
> giving some statistics on the amount of traffic before and after this
> started. That's the sort of report that's more likely to get their
> attention, because it's a complaint about a technical issue.
Except that their stated policy is that it is technically impossible
for anything human-generated to constitute a newsgroup flood.
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a real computer.
Peter da Silva
Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>Peter da Silva <pe...@taronga.com> writes:
>> Maybe, but the folks attacking alt.life.suck from alt.net, with massive
>> spillover from alt.animals.dolphins, are showing no sign of letting up.
>I'd recommend reporting it to ab...@alt.net as a newsgroup flood and
>giving some statistics on the amount of traffic before and after this
>started. That's the sort of report that's more likely to get their
>attention, because it's a complaint about a technical issue.
I've done that. Chris pointed out that killfiles work perfectly well
and argued that no single person could possibly send enough messages
to shut down a newsgroup. Seriously, that's what he said.
That's with several hundred messages a day at the peak in a group with
five to maybe twenty messages a day normally.
Jim Kingdon
> and argued that no single person could possibly send enough messages
> to shut down a newsgroup. Seriously, that's what he said.
Well, were the messages killfile-able? That is, did they have a
single from line or something, or were they trying to evade killfiles
like hipcrime does?
I think I can (still) see both sides of this. It is true that people
"shouldn't" have to set up killfiles just to make a newsgroup
readable. It is also true that not giving disrupters what they want -
disruption - can be fairly effective in getting them to tire of the
game.
If I am correctly interpreting the Altopia policies on floods, a flood
(in their book) is something that overloads servers. Merely
overloading humans doesn't seem to trigger the policy.
El Sysadmin Invisible
] As far as Afterburner's success goes, I don't think he *needs* any
] wussy Legions of Terror to back him up- he's a pretty damned scary
] apparition in his own right. Legions would be but frosting on the
] shuggoth.
At least one of them is some mighty tasty frosting *leer*
--
Eric Sorenson, ro...@satanic.org - http://satanic.org/ | alt.fan.xlock-rotor
"there were stars, there were flies." - perry farrell | focus on the 2 dots
Peter da Silva
Jim Kingdon <kin...@panix7.panix.com> wrote:
>> I've done that. Chris pointed out that killfiles work perfectly well
>> and argued that no single person could possibly send enough messages
>> to shut down a newsgroup. Seriously, that's what he said.
>Well, were the messages killfile-able? That is, did they have a
>single from line or something, or were they trying to evade killfiles
>like hipcrime does?
/Newsgroups: alt.life.sucks/h:j was almost 100% effective.
>If I am correctly interpreting the Altopia policies on floods, a flood
>(in their book) is something that overloads servers. Merely
>overloading humans doesn't seem to trigger the policy.
Overloading servers is a performance problem. The way Usenet works the
impact on any single server is almost irrelevant, it's a short term
problem that can be resolved by a filter rule.
Usenet is not computers. Usenet is people [1]. Overloading humans is a MUCH
bigger problem, because it seems to selectively drive away the folks who are
most useful and interesting... and certainly most diverse... leaving only
a hard core of fanatics and flamers and the most techno-sophisticated. People
like me.
Well, damnit, just when Usenet is getting interesting, with more people who
aren't like me, these common vandals pop up and trash the place. They should
not be allowed to do that. This is why we HAVE Usenet II, but we shouldn't
have to have these little walled communities to have a useful net.
[1] No Soylent Green jokes, please.
Abby Franquemont
>
>Right. This time, they'd have a choice between working together to fix and
>being taken out back and used for target practice. ;>
>
>Terror.
Forget being taken out back and used for target practice. Try something
like taken out back and being forced to listen to... um. A list of people
I won't name lest they might find the reference to it and think to try
to come this way to speak up for themselves, but who we all know exactly
who I'm talking about, now don't we?
Or forced to listen at length to the 6-CD set of News.Groups Gold. Yes, for
only $19.95 you too can own this special collection of the finest flamefests
from news.groups over the years. Order now and for no extra cost we'll throw
in the songs of news.admin.policy. Plus, you'll be enrolled in our special
club and receive this card, suitable for laminating, good for admission to
all banquets at the Cesspool Room. You'll hear such hits as "Faggot Cocksucker
From Texas," right in the comfort of your own home. And who could forget
the timeless strains of "Homosexual Nazi Sympathizer?" Act now and we'll
also send you this lovely collection of poems on a handy portable DLT tape.
Just imagine being able to drive down the road while listening to "USENET
Mail to News Gateway Retires," or any of these wonderful never-before-released
versions of "Imminent Death of the Net Predicted, File at 11." Have you been
wondering whether or not to .miscify your kitchen? Act now and we'll also
send you this unread FAQ about proper naming.
Yes, your membership in this Cabal (TINC) also includes this autographed
picture of David Lawrence. You'll also receive our monthly newsletter,
which will help to keep you up to date on the latest Kook Simulators. You
too can _know_ where Russ Allbery works, and mark off your scheduling
concerns on the Throbbing Spools Throughout The Ages catalog. Plus, you'll
get this Chyx of the Cabal (TINC) door-size poster and KotM dartboard.
Yes, call now, Dave Hayes and his Freedom Knights are standing by to take
your order. The first 100 callers will also receive a faux sufi platitude
at no extra cost.
--
Abby Franquemont "I might have amnesia -- but I'm not stupid!"
J. Random BOFH --Jackie Chan
Kai Henningsen
> But most people DON'T have a sense of honor (why is everyone looking at me
> like that...) - most people have NEVER had a sense of honor.
Worse, the people who have often find that they don't have a common
definition of what "honor" is - sometimes not even an overlapping one
(when "honor=face" meets "honor=integrity", for example).
> The only way to get people to play nice is to have a big man with a stick
> standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
Or to only have a few people. Not a solution, but that's why so many
systems rely on honor when small, and fail when growing.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
sw
>>> stick standing there to beat them if they get too out of line.
>
>> Or to only have a few people. Not a solution, but that's why so many
>> systems rely on honor when small, and fail when growing.
>
>community should be open and inclusive and welcoming and that new people
>were always a good thing. Now, I think I really understand the benefit of
>having both.
You gain wisdom, grasshopper.