Cancelbot
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
A cancelbot is an automated or semi-automated process for sending out third-party
History
One of the earliest uses of a cancelbot was by microbiology professor Richard DePew, to remove anonymous postings in science newsgroups.
Rationale
Cancelbots must follow community consensus to be able to serve a useful purpose, and historically, technical criteria have been the only acceptable criteria for determining if messages are cancelable, and only a few active cancellers ever obtain the broad community support needed to be effective.
Pseudosites are referenced in cancel headers by legitimate cancelbots to identify the criteria on which a message is being canceled, allowing administrators of Usenet sites to determine via standard "aliasing" mechanisms which criteria that they will accept third-party cancels for.
Currently, the generally accepted criteria (and associated pseudosites) are:[6]
Pseudosite | Criterion |
---|---|
Breidbart Index above the cancel threshold for the group or hierarchy | cyberspam!usenet |
"Make money fast" schemes | mmfcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
"Spew" (large number of nonsense or repeated postings) | spewcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
Binary files posted to a group that doesn't allow them | bincancel!cyberspam!usenet |
Retromoderation (only applies to groups that have a retromoderation policy in place) | retromod!cyberspam!usenet |
Ad cancels within the biz.* hierarchy | adcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
Messages originating from sites or networks under active Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) sanction by the community; the UDP is exceedingly rare, requiring a broad consensus that a Usenet site is acting in a manner generally harmful to the community, and active cancellation under a UDP is even rarer still | sitenameudp!udpcancel!cyberspam!usenet |
By general convention, special values are given in X-Canceled-By, Message-Id and Path headers when performing third-party cancels. This allows administrators to decide which reasons for third-party cancellation are acceptable for their site:
- The $alzconvention states that the Message-Id: header used for a third-party cancel should always be the original Message-Id: with "cancel." prepended.
- The X-Canceled-By: convention states that the operator of a cancelbot should provide a consistent, valid, and actively monitored contact email address for their cancelbot in the X-Canceled-By: header, both to identify the canceler, and to provide a point of contact in case something goes wrong or questions arise regarding the cancelbot's operations.
- The !cyberspam convention states that specific pseudosites should be given within the cancel message's Path to identify them as complying with certain cancel criteria, see above.
See also
References
- ^ Scott Southwick; J.D. Falk. "The Net Abuse FAQ". Archived from the original on November 1, 1996. Retrieved 2006-09-02.
- ISBN 9781447100577.
- ^ Canter, Laurence. "Green Card Lottery- Final One?". Retrieved 2006-09-02.
- ^ Gulbrandsen, Arnt. "Now comes the C&S crunch... let's see". Retrieved 2006-09-02.
- ^ Gulbrandsen, Arnt. "Canter and Siegel: What really happened".
- ^ "Cancel Messages FAQ". wiki.killfile.org. Retrieved 2018-05-09.