From: Andrew Gierth (andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk)
Date: Sat Oct 06 2001 - 14:16:43 CDT
>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
>>> Actually, I can see some benefit in having these messages visible
>>> in the groups affected, so people are aware of what is going on
>>> around them. But there needs to be some simple means to avoid
>>> seeing them if you (or your site) doesn't want to.
>> But that makes all the users of old readers forced to read them or
>> killfile them.
Charles> So?
Why do you think spam cancels are posted with X-No-Archive?
>> And since bulk cancels don't as readily show up in a specific
>> group (commonly they would be massively crossposted) it would be a
>> horrendous mess.
Charles> They will show up in exactly the groups to which the
Charles> original messages were posted (and I am supposing that all
Charles> the cancels in one bulk message will refer to the same
Charles> spam/spew; so that will be just those groups that were
Charles> affected).
This is just not going to happen; a spam cancel _cannot_ be
crossposted more widely than the original message(s) it refers to,
because that would reduce its propagation, preventing it from reaching
all the sites that the original message reached.
Right now, there is exactly one case in which a multiple-article
cancel would be useful, and that is when doing _manual_ cancels of a
group-specific flood (i.e. many articles with the same Newsgroups
header). Even that is less useful than it might sound, because after
the first manual run any further cancels will likely be auto-generated
and therefore not batched.
-- Andrew.