From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Oct 08 2001 - 06:37:37 CDT
In <877ku8vask.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
> 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.
I am not clear as to why crossposting more widely means it reaches fewer
sites. Suppose a spam is posted as two articles with
Newsgroups: A,B,C
Newsgroups: D,E,F
then a multi-article cancel (or an equivalent nocem) would be posted to
Newsgroups: A,B,C,D,E,F
Do you have any problem with that? (OK, my example has not enough BI to be
cancellable, but you get the idea).
>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.
Though a sufficiently smart auto-generator could probably manage it.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5