Banning annoying users

The
not allowing unsubscribed individuals to post is logical, for a time.  But
that basically outlaws anon remailers that don't allow you to send to an
account, and a lot of them don't, from my limited understanding.  Besides, if
we set up the list to ban people who are 'undesirable', instead of just using
our own killfiles to do the dirty work for the list, then what is to stop
someone from banning you?  Sure, you move on to another list, but, personally,
I wouldn't want it done to me, and so I would not do it to someone else.  But,
like I said, personal killfiles are more than encouraged.  It resolves these
kinds of conflicts a lot faster and cleaner than debating who and who should
not be banned.

---
Daniel.

--
If in fact we are the only intelligent life on this planet, why the fuck are
we in this goddamn mess?
--
Find my public key on the World Wide Web -- point your browser at:
http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html

On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Daniel Miskell wrote:

> The
> not allowing unsubscribed individuals to post is logical, for a time.  But
> that basically outlaws anon remailers that don't allow you to send to an
> account, and a lot of them don't, from my limited understanding.  Besides, if
> we set up the list to ban people who are 'undesirable', instead of just using
> our own killfiles to do the dirty work for the list, then what is to stop
> someone from banning you?  Sure, you move on to another list, but, personally,
> I wouldn't want it done to me, and so I would not do it to someone else.  But,
> like I said, personal killfiles are more than encouraged.  It resolves these
> kinds of conflicts a lot faster and cleaner than debating who and who should
> not be banned.


This is wonderful in theory -- and in practice up until now, but what 
happens when someone decides "Oh, I hate this list and Tim, let me write 
a spam bot to anonymously spam the this into oblivion?"  There is such a 
thing as denial of service via spamming.  It's quite easy to do for 
someone who knows how to run sendmail and knows how to write a shell 
script or a small program.  Hell, I could write one of those in less than 
1 minute.

As for me being banned, I doubt it, I'm not posting daily Tim warnings 
and such spams.  yeah, banning someone off the list for their political 
or even crypto views is silly.  Banning someone for spamming is another 
issue.

There is no reason we can't allow posts from those who are not subscribed 
to the list.  There's also no reason that we can't have someone moderate 
those posts before they make it to the list to remove the spams - mind 
you not to moderate the contents, but to remove repeating annoying spam 
and advertisement.

As for me, I don't personally give a shit, for as long as assholes like 
John Anonymous Mac keeps posting "Tim Warnings" I get more users on my 
filtered cypherpunks list. :)  But it's getting really old.

=============================================================================
 + ^ + |  Ray Arachelian    |FL|       KAOS KERAUNOS KYBERNETOS      |==/|\==
  \|/  |sunder@brainlink.com|UL|__Nothing_is_true,_all_is_permitted!_|=/\|/\=
<--+-->| ------------------ |CG|What part of 'Congress shall make no |=\/|\/=
  /|\  | Just Say "No" to   |KA|law abridging the freedom of speech' |==\|/==
 + v + | Janet Reno & GAK   |AK|        do you not understand?       |=======
===================http://www.brainlink.org/~sunder/=========================
           ActiveX! ActiveX! Format Hard drive? Just say yes!

On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Ray Arachelian wrote:

> This is wonderful in theory -- and in practice up until now, but what 
> happens when someone decides "Oh, I hate this list and Tim, let me write 
> a spam bot to anonymously spam the this into oblivion?"  There is such a 
> thing as denial of service via spamming.  It's quite easy to do for 
> someone who knows how to run sendmail and knows how to write a shell 
> script or a small program.  Hell, I could write one of those in less than 
> 1 minute.
> 
> As for me being banned, I doubt it, I'm not posting daily Tim warnings 
> and such spams.  yeah, banning someone off the list for their political 
> or even crypto views is silly.  Banning someone for spamming is another 
> issue.
> 
> There is no reason we can't allow posts from those who are not subscribed 
> to the list.  There's also no reason that we can't have someone moderate 
> those posts before they make it to the list to remove the spams - mind 
> you not to moderate the contents, but to remove repeating annoying spam 
> and advertisement.

This scheme would not allow people using anonymous remailers to post to the
list.  If you let posts through anonymous remailers through, then the refusal
to allow anyone not subscribed to post becomes meaningless.  Spam can be
prevented by looking for a large number of messages delivered at about the same
time.  There's no need to involve a moderator.

Mark
-- 
PGP encrypted mail prefered.
Key fingerprint = d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348
http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/

Daniel Miskell wrote:

| The
| not allowing unsubscribed individuals to post is logical, for a time.  But
| that basically outlaws anon remailers that don't allow you to send to an
| account, and a lot of them don't, from my limited understanding.  Besides, if
| we set up the list to ban people who are 'undesirable', instead of just using
| our own killfiles to do the dirty work for the list, then what is to stop

	If non-subscribers, aka remailers are banned from cypherpunks,
I'll personally subscribe every remailer to the list.  Be a good
exercise in writing filters for the remailers.

	Saying that you can't deal with immature people using
remailers, and thus they should be banned from cypherpunks is ammo to
our opponents, who will sieze the opportunity to say, 'See, even
cypherpunks can't deal with anonymity.'

	The list has gone way downhill, but offers a forum unavailable
elsewhere online.  As Tim points out, you can contribute or leave.
I'm trying to contribute.

	As a basic rule of thumb, if your posts are generating lots of
flames, you're not contributing, you're arguing.  (He says to generate
flames.)

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume

> The not allowing unsubscribed individuals to post is logical, for a
> time.  

This isn't practical for the reason that many people who read and post
to the list are not subscribed to the list.  (There are many gateways,
local mail->news gateways, etc.  eg point your nntp aware news
reader at nntp.hks.net.)

Either delete the junk, or subscribe to a filtered list if deleting or
not reading posts bothers you enough that you think it worth the risk
that the filter owner filters a few posts that you would have found
interesting.  

(killfiling on address is not possible for remailer, and content of
unattributed unsigned anonymous posts is difficult to automatically
filter).

Adam