who has the authority to remove alt. groups?
jamesd writes:
Anybody has the power. Nobody has the authority.
More precisely, anybody has the power to send a rmgroup message, just like anybody has the power to send a cancel message. Aside from ettiquette and ethics, the question is whether most of the news servers out there will respond to them, which is a local decision. The last time I ran a news server was in B News days, so your mileage may vary, but responses to newgroup and rmgroup messages can be turned on and off. I used to leave them turned on; not only did new groups appear on my system without manual intervention, but the Great Renaming took care of itself automatically on my box.
[...] This is a classic case of net abuse. Yep. rmgroup wars happen occasionally on the net, usually about alt.joe.newuser.die.die.die and other spam groups run by (or about) people with more spare time than taste. The difference here is that it's part of an organized group-sponsored censorship attempt, rather than an individual squabble, so it retains some degree of classicity.
Bill