Path: local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:37:47 +0000 Subject: Re: Young people peering Newsgroups: news.software.nntp References: <875xwbn9ec.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> From: Ross Finlayson Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2024 21:38:14 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <875xwbn9ec.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <2f6cndx2PfCGBbn7nZ2dnZfqnPSdnZ2d@giganews.com> Lines: 74 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-ThJlEmk7q1MFzyTpQ2tfxIad0OugyUpdq+fxyqiPgYK0MtdrpFmdVSbf67v395nj2lMRAa15nZm2LBL!novv+ZBeUz4N2MxGVf3LWFWviJ7SnD3GbDlh0T+29nbHaoi615M56tz/ZwIAUCKPuDxu7mdQ4akb X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 5216 On 04/20/2024 12:04 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: > Marco Moock writes: >> On 20.04.2024 um 17:42 Uhr The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote: > >>> When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they >>> will ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, >>> nor that they will institute a code of conduct which is actively >>> antifascist, because the values of the network are not actively >>> antifascist and in fact tend towards calling antifascists whiners. > >> This is something every newsmaster can decide himself. > > Sort of. The NNTP and netnews protocols have exceptionally poor support > for moderation compared to just about any other message board software, > since essentially everything else was designed after NNTP and netnews and > learned from its shortcomings. > > You can insert an extremely heavy moderation step in front of all traffic > (but only for private groups or if you can reach an agreement with your > transitive peers), but the protocol is completely insecure, and while > there are patchwork solutions to that, you have to implement them > yourself. Or you have to rely on filtering, which is a very poor > moderation strategy that requires endless arms races with people trying to > bypass it. > > And all of the more advanced tools available in newer protocols simply > aren't there (for better or worse; Usenet people usually don't like most > of these, but people running other types of message board systems use them > heavily): migrating messages to different threads, closing threads, user > authentication and all the things that come with that such as poster bans > or pre-moderation for new users but not established users, etc. About the > only thing you can do is delete the message off your server after the > fact, and the tools for doing that are very primitive. You can simulate > some of this by writing a whole pile of custom software that sits in the > pre-moderation path, but now you've signed on for the project of writing a > moderation system from scratch. The protocol and existing software base > are doing essentially nothing for you. > > A lot of people prefer the Usenet model for various reasons, and that's > fine, that's something people can argue about. But Usenet's moderation > and filtering facilities are staggeringly primitive, and if those are a > priority for you, Usenet is a bad technology choice and you should use > something else. > Hello good sir, one thing I'd like to figure out is cleanfeed with regards to the reference implementation in Perl and with regards to extracting out the ruleset and making it so the same rules can be evaluated according to a usual sort of cleanfeed convention. It's similar with the config files of INND, with regards to that they are normative, in a sense, and should have a sort of reference implementation. The rather esoteric moderation tools or as with respect to control band and trust networks, has that it really is a great sort of invisible hand in effect, that one hopes would be sort of stood up as modernizable. Perhaps it you told the young people that Usenet was sort of like a blockchain, of email, maybe that would make more sense. About modernization, there's the client protocol which needs no modernization, given that it has TLS and SASL pretty much, though one might aver it would be something to "make a normative sort of HTTP protocol about it", yet really NNTP is more aligned with Email than Hypertext, then though about the server or compeer protocols, and about the agreements and traditions in trust, your advice and requirements about these kinds of things would be very appreciated, with regards to context of the system and its surrounds and purpose.