Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: warning to all sinners in regard to current C News patches
Message-ID: <1991Apr3.172825.27190@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1991 17:28:25 GMT
References: <1991Mar24.035259.20738@zoo.toronto.edu> <RD.91Mar29140206@pixie.aii.com> <UHJPNUU@methan.chemie.fu-berlin.de> <1991Mar31.055947.18653@looking.on.ca> <1991Apr03.033233.16633@buster.stafford.tx.us>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Apr03.033233.16633@buster.stafford.tx.us> rli@buster.stafford.tx.us writes:
>... everyone would have to continue accepting the out of spec
>articles for a period of time while we track down and notify the
>source of the bad articles.

Unfortunately, it's hard to make this work.  The combination of header
rewriting at B News sites and apathy/inertia/workload of sysadmins would
make it relatively difficult to get results this way.

The intent of the "bad articles" reports in newsdaily's output was to
achieve the same thing, on a more local level and with teeth:  sysadmins
can report to their neighbors that articles are being dropped for bad
headers.

>... Simply dropping the offensive articles on the
>floor is not an acceptable answer.

It's hard to do anything else.  Bouncing them back to the author is not
a viable approach.  Not only does it easily result in the originator
getting hundreds of mail messages, but *the originator is usually an
innocent victim of bad software*.  We judged that having a gateway
machine tell its neighbor "everything you send us is being dropped"
was much more effective, and had a better chance of getting the message
to people who could do something about it.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
