[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Reposted from Usenet: Freedom Knights
- To: [email protected]
- Subject: Reposted from Usenet: Freedom Knights
- From: [email protected] (Dr. Dimitri Vulis)
- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 96 00:05:40 EST
- Comments: Obscenities forbidden (18 U.S.Code 1462)
- Organization: Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.
- Sender: [email protected]
These two Usenet articles have little crypto relevance (one sentense that
I put in). Still, those who believe in free speech should be interested.
From: [email protected] (Dave Hayes)
Newsgroups: news.admin.censorship,news.admin.misc,news.admin.policy,news.admin.net-abuse.announce,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: An Alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet
Followup-To: news.admin.censorship
Date: 28 Mar 1996 03:54:04 -0800
Organization: JetCafe - A Non-Profit Internet Service Provider
Lines: 454
Sender: [email protected]
Approved: [email protected]
Distribution: world
Expires: 27 Apr 96 04:53:59
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Freedom Knights of Usenet)
NNTP-Posting-Host: kachina.jetcafe.org
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Summary: This posting clarifies and defines True Free Speech
Keywords: FREEDOM, CENSORSHIP, NET-ABUSE, NET-COPS
X-URL: http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
Posted-By: auto-faq 3.2.1.4
Archive-name: freedom-faq
Revision: 1.6
Posting-Frequency: Posted once each month
An alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and Usenet
Dave Hayes
[email protected]
------------------------------
Subject: 0. Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1) What this document is
1.2) Prerequisites
2. Background
3. Basic Definitions
4. Basic Philosophies
4.1) Declaration of Free Speech
4.2) What is 'True Free Speech'?
4.3) What is 'net abuse'?
5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills)
------------------------------
Subject: 1. Introduction
1.1) What this document is
This document represents an ongoing attempt to educate people about
true freedom of speech among the emerging cyber-communities. There is
a companion document to this, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ, which
should be read AFTER this document.
1.2) Prerequisites
If you don't know what Usenet is, you're reading the wrong document!
Go look in the newsgroup news.answers for appropriate introductory
documents. There are many, and each has their own point of view. In
order to understand the discussions here you should be familiar with
USENET in general, and have a reasonable amount of experience posting
and/or reading news.
If these documents are not in news.answers or news.announce.newusers
on your site, they can be had by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in
the directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/announce/newusers.
If you have a WWW browser, the following URLS should help you out:
<http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/>
It helps to be familiar with news administration, how news works
in general, and have kept up in some discussions on news.admin.*,
but this is not totally mandatory for understanding this document.
Finally, you should believe that no expression, however annoying,
profit-oriented or counterproductive, should be prevented from being
distributed. If you do not believe in this way, this document will
only make you angry. (If that's what you want, then read it.)
------------------------------
Subject: 2. Background
For a long time, I've been a loud advocate of free speech in most of
the USENET related administration groups. I've participated in a few
net.political actions to ensure the freedom of speech that we'd like
to enjoy. For my efforts, I've been publically branded a loon, insane,
idealistic, moronic, obnoxious, wacko, a kook, and other expletives
which I'd rather not go into.
Many times, I've repeated the same arguments over and over, all of
which relate to this ultimate goal of absolute free speech. Well,
after several years even a loon such as myself gets tired of repeating
the same stuff over and over. It had been suggested that I write a FAQ
of sorts on my ideas, and I felt the time was right, so here it is.
Herein lies the heart of my arguments, and questions with answers
about them. The companion document, the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ
describes a new credo that willing USENET participants can actually
adopt and use if they so desire.
I implore you not to adopt -any- credo (even this one) or philosophy
just because someone you see does so as well, for these credos only
work for individuals who have personally and honestly decided that
these are good ideas. Use your own judgement and take your power back
from those who wish to steal it from you.
------------------------------
Subject: 3. Basic Definitions
Here are some definitions which you'll find apply to things in this document,
and most of my arguments.
Beliefs - Networks of assumptions about the way things are.
Ethics - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy one's own true self.
Directly opposed to Morals (see below)
Lawful Speech - That speech which does not conflict with Morals
Morals - Rules of conduct which appease and satisfy a governing, social,
or communal entity.
------------------------------
Subject: 4. Basic Philosophies
4.1) Declaration of Free Speech
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Humans are created
equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Unhindered Communications, Unregulated
Exchange of Ideas, and Freedom of Speech, that to secure these rights
the Usenet is instituted on networks of the world, that when any
administration of Usenet becomes destructive to these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institue new
administration, laying its foundation on such Principles, and
organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Free Communication.
[With much thanks to the Declaration of Independence]
4.2) What is True Free Speech?
True Free Speech is that speech which is hindered by nothing other
than the speaking individual's own ethics (see definition above).
Where True Free Speech exists, no external party may restrict someone
else's speech, for any reason, period.
Speech, in the above definition, does *not* restrict another's speech.
It can't. It takes a person to *act* on that speech to restrict
another's speech. That person, then, would be the responsible party.
A news admin setting up a news server to act is one way to create the
illusion of speech-restrictive speech.
The litmus test for True Free Speech is speech that makes you -want-
to silence another person. If that speech is not silencable by you
(whether you want to or not), you have a state of True Free Speech.
4.3) What is net abuse?
Any action that stops a properly configured transport system from
performing its normal store and forward services.
The key words are "properly configured". For that definition, you'll
have to see the "Site of Virtue" FAQ.
4.4) What is Censorship?
Censorship is the restriction of communicated ideas based on their
expression style or their content. On Usenet, this is defined as
reading or parsing anything but certain specific headers of a news
article to determine whether or not to delete it from the news spool
of a news server.
By this criterion, the following RFC 1036 headers can NOT be
interpreted in any way, in order to avoid censorship:
Sender:
From:
Subject:
NNTP-Posting-Host:
Approved:
Also, any invokation of the "Usenet Death Penalty" by aliasing a site
out of one's feed is considered blatant censorship. Unless a clear
newsfeed redundancy problem can be identified, such aliasing is
considered censorship.
------------------------------
Subject: 5. Frequently Debated Strawmen (aka Windmills)
This section contains the many frequently debated arguments (with
"Dave Hayes" like answers) over free speech issues. If you find
yourself embroiled in a debate with a control freak, the information
below should help you out. If you find yourself embroiled in a debate
with me, you might want to save time and read below.
- Free speech is all well and good, but what is to prevent
unreasonable users from committing "net-abuse"?
The strawman here is that someone else is defining "net-abuse"
quite differently than I do above.
Any label of "net-abuse" is based on an arbitrary standard of conduct
held by a person or group of people (even mine). There is nothing that
says that this standard of conduct is the one true and right standard
of conduct. People's standards vary.
You, as a free person, have an unalienable right to a choice as to
whether or not to adopt any standard of conduct. This is based on your
ethics, not their morals. Thus, if someone labels you "unreasonable",
that's not your problem...it's theirs.
I'm not saying you should now go out and kill someone. I'm merely
stressing the importance of ethics, internal codes of conduct which
you will not violate (because -you- wrote them), in determining
whether or not you did something wrong.
- But there IS a general consensus on what net abuse is! Most news
admins have adopted it.
Don't let anyone fool you into believing that there some written
consensus on or standard of net.abuse. There isn't, and if it claims
to be, you can determine the invalidity of such a claim by observing
just how many people argue about it. Without a consensus, it's quite
arbitrary as to what people will claim abuse is.
If someone has written up something, think about whether you agreed to
abide by it or not before the fact when you are called to task on some
violation. It is the root of dishonor to hold someone responsible to a
code of conduct they didn't know about. Not only does this not work,
but it's damn unfair.
You may get localized consensi who decide to act not unlike the street
gangs in LA or the legal gangs in American Federal Government, armed
with scripts and authority, they attempt to bully people into
submission into their way. This does not mean that there is a
consensus. You can't expect 50,000 or more who come to a consensus on
an issue this complex.
Typically, the label of abuse is used as a wedge to stop someone
from posting something that isn't liked, but this isn't always the
case. Sometimes, people are genuinely trying to help things out.
Such people should be reminded of the arbitrary nature of their
standards, and of the wide variety of people on the net.
- We can't allow free speech. What if something extremely damaging is
posted?
This strawman can easily be debunked by recognizing who is defining
'damage'. See above, as this is the same as saying something is
"net-abuse".
The true test of freedom of expression is when the advocates of True
Free Speech are confronted with expression that they find they would
like to silence.
If this test is passed, the expression remains a thorn in their side.
The thorn serves a great purpose as a reminder of the true freedom
they have.
If this test is failed, the entire philosophy of True Free Speech
soon crumbles, and true freedom of expression becomes a bad thing
in the eyes of the people who tried. "After all, people will abuse
anything if given the chance", they'll say.
We already have true freedom. We just keep agreeing to give it up.
- But there really are damaging things that can be posted!
You didn't listen above. Let me try another way. Here are some
commonly dredged up examples of "damaging" information:
* recipes for strong encryption
* pornography and obscenity
* recipes for making chemical, biological, and atomic weapons
* recipes for making counterfeit money
Dr. Dimitri Vulis said it really succinctly:
"Posting such information to Usenet doesn't force anyone to use it to
take some illegal action. And even if publishing such information by
itself violates your local laws, it's up to your local law enforcement
agents to silence you, not the Usenet Cabal."
- There is no cabal. Anyone saying this is obviously a kook.
Ah, and if there was a "secret society", what better way to hide
it than by denying it and causing those who do not to look foolish?
A "Cabal" of usenet has been identified. This Cabal is defined as:
"Those net citizens, including some usenet administrators, who by their
own consensus reality, set themselves apart from and superior to
usenet users and use this illusory superiority to restrict or censor
any usenet user's attempts at communication through usenet."
The Cabal generally works in concert with each other over their own
private channels of communication. You can tell a Cabal member by the
arrogant holier-than-thou way that they refuse or block your attempts
at communication, regardless of external perceptions of reasonability
about those attempts.
Just to be clear, I have no reason to believe that these people are
acting out of deliberate malice. It's simply a trait of human beings
to abuse positions of power and respect to their own ends. In this
case this trait is damaging the freedom of usenet.
- If a lot of people complain about someone, there must be something
that person is doing wrong.
Just because a mob comes to your door and demands to lynch someone,
doesn't mean that the someone in question did anything worthy of
being lynched. Usenet has become mob-oriented with several issues,
most notably the famous C&S spamming, demonstrating the new jargon
term "cybermob".
Mobs are generally ignorant, dense, and single-minded. They have
a tendancy to be generated by emotional issues, with subsequent
loss of sanity for most involved. Do you really want to trust the
judgement of someone else to this phenomena?
Yes, once you become a sysadmin, the rest of the Usenet community will
expect that you are prepared to discipline your users when they engage
in whatever they decide to call net-abuse. Hopefully, by then, you
will have grown past that.
And what does this discipline really accomplish? Usually, nothing.
- Someone is defaming me. They should be silenced.
Forget USENET, what if these people were to say the same things
in person, or to other people while you are not present?
Again, Free Speech requires that people have the *ability* to defame
you. Remember that you also have the ability to defend yourself. If
such defamation gets too intense, see your lawyer, and attempt to get
the defamer to agree to stop.
- Free speech means the ability to say what you want. It does
not guarantee you _where_ you want to say it and _how_ you
want to say it.
This is a definitions strawman. If you can't say something
where and how you want to say it, is your speech truly free?
Would you like some arbitrary person telling you where and
how you can say certain things? I can see it now:
"Sure you have free speech, at 3AM on channel 145 for 2.5 minutes."
Anyone using this argument has no understanding or desire for
free speech, by the very fact that they use this argument.
Free speech, as defined in this document, guarantees that you can say
anything, anywhere, and anyway you want to.
- USENET operates on certain principles. Create your own net if you
don't like the way it runs.
This is a political hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to
convince you that everyone else likes things the way they are, and
that everyone else is in control of USENET.
If you are running a site, this is patently false. USENET is a collective
anarchy, where site admins have authority over their part of the collective.
You have absolute control over your site to run it any way you want to.
If you aren't running a site, don't waste your breath arguing with
these people. Find a Site of Virtue to post from, and support Sites
of Virtue. That way, we -will- create our own net.
- If you argue for free speech, people aren't going to take you seriously.
This is an emotional hostage strawman. The arguer is attempting to play
on your need to be taken seriously to coerce you into doing things their
way...or they won't take you seriously.
There are others who won't take you seriously if you cave into these
coercions. Still, others won't take you seriously at all. If we become
affected by everyone's impressions of us, we will certainly be candidates
for an insane asylum.
I would think that you don't really need to be taken seriously by
anybody who would attempt to coerce you in this way.
-But this is Usenet, a place where speaking is a privilege, not a right.
That all depends on your site admin. If you are at a Site of Virtue,
speaking is a right.
-Freedom of speech does not mean yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater.
Patently false. Yes, it does mean that.
Practically, if you hear someone yell "FIRE!" then you have some
decisions to make. Are you going to believe that person or not,
especially when you see nothing? If you do believe this person, are
you going to run for the door like a crazed animal, or quickly make
your way to the exit in a civilized manner?
Whichever you choose, it's -your- choice and -your- responsibility.
It is -not- the responsibility of the person who yelled "FIRE!"
that -you- chose one direction or another. Any other decision
strips your power away from you.
- It's wrong to force me to read your trash.
Given that people have to manually select articles from a menu, it's
hard to imagine someone forcing their fingers to press certain keys in
a certain order, so that people are forced to read anything.
Indeed, the entire concept of force becomes ludicrous when one recognizes
that one can simply close one's eyes and not read anything presented to
them.
This does bring up a point, however. There -is- a place for
censorship. Your personal newsreaders.
- But who gave you free speech rights on my computer?
YOU did when you loaded the news transport software. According to RFC1036,
making a news server and getting a feed allows the transport of messages
between your news server and another. If you do not specifically filter
messages, those messages are allowed by implication.
- You can't think like that. Your reputation will suffer.
The value of a set of words is contained within the set of words, NOT
in who said them. It is a common mistake of most human beings to judge
the validity of a set of words mostly upon the reputation of the
messenger.
------------------------------
Subject: Revision History
$Log: freedom-faq.1,v $
Revision 1.6 1996/03/13 22:56:11 dave
Added Dr. Vulis suggested changes: Approved line = censorship,
examples of speech commonly considered damage, other misc.
Revision 1.5 1996/03/04 00:03:59 dave
Added definition of Cabal
Revision 1.4 1996/02/28 21:53:33 dave
Changed libel back to defamation.
Revision 1.3 1996/02/28 00:32:34 dave
Changed "slander" to "libel", as the latter is more appropriate
for USENET.
Revision 1.2 1996/02/19 08:16:15 dave
Tightened up the definition of TFS, added a definition for Censorship,
added a few words here and there for da flow.
Revision 1.1.1.2 1996/02/19 07:52:11 dave
Initial Import
--
>>> Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - [email protected] <<<
You need not wonder whether you should have a reliable person as a friend.
An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
From: [email protected] (Dave Hayes)
Newsgroups: news.admin.censorship,news.admin.misc,news.admin.policy,news.admin.net-abuse.announce,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: The USENET Site of Virtue FAQ
Followup-To: news.admin.misc
Date: 28 Mar 1996 03:54:57 -0800
Organization: JetCafe - A Non-Profit Internet Service Provider
Lines: 420
Sender: [email protected]
Approved: [email protected]
Distribution: world
Expires: 27 Apr 96 04:54:52
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Freedom Knights of Usenet)
NNTP-Posting-Host: kachina.jetcafe.org
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Summary: This posting describes how to run a USENET Site of Virtue,
Keywords: FREEDOM, KNIGHT, HONOR, VIRTUE, CENSORSHIP
X-URL: http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
Posted-By: auto-faq 3.2.1.4
Archive-name: virtue-faq
Revision: 1.5
Posting-Frequency: Posted once each month
The USENET Site of Virtue FAQ
Dave Hayes
[email protected]
------------------------------
Subject: 0. Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1) What this document is
1.2) Prerequisites
1.3) Internet Resources
2. Basic Definitions
2.1) What is a 'Freedom Knight'?
2.1.1) How does one become a Freedom Knight?
2.2) What is a USENET 'site of virtue'?
2.3) What is a USENET 'newsreader of virtue'?
2.4) What does "content-based" mean?
3. The Freedom Knight Code of Honor
4. Technical Issues for a Site Of Virtue
5. Policy Issues for a Site Of Virtue
6. Technical Issues for a Newsreader Of Virtue
7. Other Frequently Asked Questions
-----------------------------
Subject: 1. Introduction
1.1) What this document is
This is the USENET Site of Virtue FAQ. It represents an ongoing
attempt to implement true freedom of speech among the emerging
cyber-communities, including standards of conduct and technical
implementation issues relavent to operating a site which supports
true freedom of speech.
A companion document is "A Primer on Net Abuse, Free Speech, and
Usenet". It is suggested that you read that first, as it describes
the philosophies behind a Site of Virtue.
1.2) Prerequisites
If you don't know what Usenet is, you're reading the wrong document!
Go look in the newsgroup news.answers for the documents "What is
Usenet" and "How to become a USENET site". In order to understand
the discussions here you should be familiar with USENET in general,
and have a reasonable amount of experience posting and/or reading
news.
If these documents are not in news.answers or news.announce.newusers
on your site, they can be had by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu in
the directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/announce/newusers.
You should be familiar with news administration, how news works
in general, and have kept up in some discussions on news.admin.*.
Finally, you should believe that no expression, however annoying or
counterproductive, should be prevented from being distributed. If you
do not believe in this way, this document will only make you angry.
(If that's what you want, then read it.)
1.3) Internet Resources
There is a mailing list which most of the freedom knights subscribe
to. The list address is "[email protected]", and
subscriptions should go to "[email protected]".
For those who do not know majordomo, put the word "help" in the
BODY (not the HEADER) of a mail message and fire it off to
"[email protected]".
If that didn't clarify what you are supposed to do, and you want
to subscribe, put the words "subscribe freedom-knights" in the body
of a mail message to "[email protected]".
There is also a WWW site, this is http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet
and this is the Freedom Knights site on the net.
-----------------------------
Subject: 2. Basic Definitions
2.1) What is a 'Freedom Knight'?
A Freedom Knight is a person who:
-Conducts themselves in a manner consistent with the
Freedom Knight Code of Honor
-Works in an honorable fashion to ensure the persistance,
defense, and existance of Sites of Virtue
These standards are completely voluntary standards, in other words
there will be people who claim to but do not adhere to all of these
standards. Such non-adherence is not a bad or good thing, nor is there
any punishment or reward associated with adherence or non-adherence.
Rather, these standards are put here merely to point the way to how a
Freedom Knight "should" act, to be worthy of the name.
It is said that you will know a person by their actions. More
directly, if someone finds someone who claims to be a Freedom Knight,
and they do not observe these standards, chances are that they aren't
*really* a Freedom Knight.
Keep in mind, this is no reason to judge a Freedom Knight's actions.
A Freedom Knight is responsible to no one other than themselves.
Russ Allbery <[email protected]> sums up the credo of the Freedom
Knight with regards to this issue. He was asked "Why won't you be
decent?". Here is his response:
>Because I have no desire to become so, for becoming "decent" requires
>that I accept a standard of society, that I order my beliefs and
>reactions in order to fit someone's standard of acceptable and
>unacceptable. That I cannot do, for my individuality is the gift of
>my Creator and is not something that I will give up lightly, easily,
>or for the sake of social acceptance. *I* *am* *myself*, and I will
>not change for you, ... or for the people who claim they are
>disappointed in me because I do not meet their internal models of what
>I should be like.
2.1.1) How does one become a Freedom Knight?
Contrary to what many would like to hear, there is no established body
of judges who proclaim a USENET citizen a Freedom Knight. This is a
completely voluntary and self-policing position, requiring no one but
oneself to proclaim knighthood.
Becoming a Freedom Knight is as simple as adopting the Freedom Knight
Code of Honor, then sending a simple message to the Freedom Knights
mailing list (see section 1.3) proclaiming yourself as a Freedom
Knight. Subscribing to the list is recommended, but not required.
Remember, it is your actions which show you to be a Freedom Knight,
not your proclamations.
2.2) What is a USENET 'Site of Virtue'?
This is a site run by a Freedom Knight which meets specific technical
requirements, as specified below.
2.3) What is a USENET 'Newsreader of Virtue'?
This is newsreader (usually found on sites run by a Freedom Knight) which
meets specific technical requirements, as specified below.
2.4) What does "content-based" mean?
"Content" is defined to be the Body of an electronic message, and/or
the Subject: line of an electronic message. You are considered to be
making content-based decisions if you have to read and parse Content
to make your determination.
Examples of content-based:
-Inappropriate posting (you have to read the message)
-Identical messages over several newsgroups (only if you read the messages)
Examples of NOT content-based:
-Running the Body through a program to determine size
-Making a cryptographic checksum from the Body
-----------------------------
Subject: 3. The Freedom Knight Code of Honor
(1) A Freedom Knight will never enforce the application of -any- content-based
standards on any other net.citizen, unless that conduct directly and immediately
renders their server's transport software incapable of performing its normal
store and forward operation.
In particular, with regard to USENET this means:
a) A Freedom Knight -never- issues cancel messages, except for
his or her own postings.
b) A Freedom Knight never removes a newsgroup from their news
server unless that newsgroup directly results in breaking one or
more software systems used to distribute or read news. An
example of this is long newsgroup names that break newsreaders.
c) A Freedom Knight will refrain from feeding another site
newsgroups that it does not want.
d) A Freedom Knight will never disable any user they have authorized
to read or post news from their site for content-based reasons.
e) The only time a Freedom Knight may punish or suspend a user's
access is if that user directly attempted to shut down the
news server's normal "store and forward" operation. Mailbombs
from the net as a result of postings do not count as direct
attempts.
f) A Freedom Knight will never take action against a user due to
complaints regarding the content of the body of any of their user's
posts.
(2) A Freedom Knight will always operate in such a way as to provide
maximal unmoderated content on their news server. Any news site
that a Freedom Knight operates is run as a Site Of Virtue, if the
ownership of the site is willing.
In particular, with regard to USENET this means:
a) A Freedom Knight carries all unmoderated groups that they can get a
feed for, regardless of content or origin, unless those groups
serve no other purpose than to directly limit freedom of
expression (e.g. alt.cancel, control, alt.nocem.*).
b) A Freedom Knight actively solicites multiple feeds, technical
considerations permitting.
c) A Freedom Knight will feed any other site, technical considerations
permitting.
d) A Freedom Knight honors all newgroups and ignores all rmgroups,
regardless of origin. The exception to this is if a newgroup message
contains special characters that will damage the active file or most
newsreader's .newsrcs.
e) A Freedom Knight does not honor ANY cancel messages in any way
shape or form. This includes Supercedes: or any other attempt to
delete postings from the news server. The only way a Freedom Knight
may honor cancel postings is if they are strongly authenticated
to be from the originator of the postings.
3) A Freedom Knight, realizing the need for personal responsibility,
will:
a) take each and every step necessary to ensure the security
and reliability of their own site,
b) read news with a newsreader of virtue,
c) have "mail shields",
d) control their own posting habits by their own internal code
of conduct, without calling undue attention to such control.
-----------------------------
Subject: 4. Technical Issues for a Site Of Virtue
In order to be a Site of Virtue, you need to be able to handle large
amounts of traffic, and be relatively immune to minor abuses of net
posters.
The technical criteria for a Site of Virtue are:
1) Maintain free newsspool space that is no less than 3 times
the nominal 24 hour news traffic.
2) Internet connection must be of T1 speed (1.5 MB/sec) or greater.
3) The operating system must be a virtual-memory, multitasking system
capable of handling large (>100) amounts of network connections at
the same time.
4) The server must have a resident copy of the source code to the news
server software you are using, and be able to build and modify the
software.
Other notes:
If you are looking to set up a reasonably fast server, emphasis on a
wide I/O channel is a must.
On the newsserver side, I recommend INN, modified with Dave's Cancel
Patches so that cancels can be safely ignored. NNTPLINK feeds
are preferred as they are faster.
In order to be accessible to the rest of the Usenet community,
you should make sure that as news administrator you are accessible
to e-mail, as [email protected] and [email protected].
For that reason, Your "mail shields" should be installed on both
these addresses.
As site administrator you should probably read news.admin.*.
Reading these groups will keep you informed about the myriad of
standards people categorize as "net-abuses", and help you understand
what is wrong with the several emerging consensus opinions about
net-abuse for yourself.
-----------------------------
Subject: Policy Issues for a Site Of Virtue
The policy issues for a Site Of Virtue are:
1) Honor all newgroups that do not break newsreading software, regardless
of origin.
2) No unauthenticated cancel messages are honored, and optionally not
propagated. Only cancel messages authenticated to be from the author
of a message are honored.
3) All newsgroups, save those which would be inappropriate due to regional
or national boundaries, are carried.
Sites Of Virtue should feed each other, as appropriate.
-----------------------------
Subject: 6. Technical Issues for a Newsreader Of Virtue
In order to be a Newsreader of Virtue, a newsreader needs to be able to
find interesting threads in a large amount of traffic/noise.
The technical criteria for a newsreader of virtue are:
1) The newsreader must allow the user to specify patterns matching
subjects or authors which the reader will then refrain from displaying
to the user.
2) The newsreader must present articles by subject/author on a menu
to be selected by the user's for reading.
3) Articles presented on a menu must either be consolodated by Subject
line, or threaded by References line.
On the reader side, we currently recommend NN or (S)TRN. Gnus 5 has
also been recommended by some, this author hasn't looked at it yet.
-----------------------------
Subject: 7. Other Frequently Asked Questions
- I need a written policy for a site of virtue. What policy should I use?
For external browsers of your policy, add this:
"If you find a posting from this site offensive, inappropriate,
or disruptive please ignore it. If you don't know how to ignore
a posting, complain to us and we will demonstrate."
For internal users of your site, add this:
"USENET is interacted with at the reader's own risk. The postings
found here are usually locatable at sites all over the world. We
take no responsibility for the validity or appropriateness of articles
posted or read on this newsserver. Postings are the sole responsibility
of the poster."
- How long should the articles' expiration times be?
On most sites, disk space will limit the expiration times, and you
will have to spend some time fine-tuning them on a per hierarchy or
group basis. It's often best if the "large file" groups -- those
carrying binaries for example -- expire more quickly than others.
Lastly, its best if a low-volume group has its expiration time set
long enough that the Frequently Asked Questions list (FAQ) and any
other periodic postings in the group are always there. Well-managed
FAQs are supposed to come with their own expiration times, and you
should configure your site to honor these.
- What are "mail shields"?
There are two types of mail shields:
1) Absorptive - These take bogus mail and delete it.
2) Reflective - These take bogus mail and send it back somewhere
along with an optional message.
There are also two types of triggers on mail shields:
1) Threshold - These keep track of author and subject and when
more than N messages are recieved with the same author or subject,
the shields go up. Usually N is up at 1000 or so.
2) Disk Space - These keep track of available disk space, and
when that gets too low it triggers the shield. These triggers
are most used with "reflective" shields, as there are other
reasons than flamage to lose one's mail capability.
In general, Reflective Disk Space shields are the best choice as they
are the most multi-purpose.
It is often good to have something similar to "procmail", by which
you can filter out annoyances from your mailbox. Also. the MH mail
system coupled with SED, AWK, or PERL provides excellent filtering
capabilities. Again, Gnus 5 has been recommended.
-----------------------------
Subject: Revision History
$Log: virtue-faq.1,v $
Revision 1.5 1996/03/10 09:26:24 dave
Changed Russ Allbery's email address by request.
Revision 1.4 1996/03/04 00:04:25 dave
Added 2.1.1 about how to become a Knight
Revision 1.3 1996/02/28 20:52:33 dave
Added Russ Allbery's very nice expression of self responsibility.
Revision 1.2 1996/02/19 08:05:52 dave
Tightened up some of the definitions and codes, added Gnus 5
as a possible newsreader, and clarified a paragraph pertaining
to moral superiority. <grin>
Revision 1.1.1.2 1996/02/19 07:52:13 dave
Initial Import
--
>>> Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - [email protected] <<<
People sell talking parrots for huge sums. They never pause to compare the
possible value of a thinking parrot. -Mulla Nasrudin
---
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">Dr. Dimitri Vulis</a>
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps