Here's something I though would probably be of interest to more than a few here that read Usenet news. First article is the "Cancel FAQ" put out by the "Judges List", which many may have seen on the new.admin.* groups. Following it is the "Judges List" FAQ. I doubt this is a major threat, but is a good example of the sort of thing that needs to be nipped in the bud. If the "Cancel FAQ" doesn't trip any alarms, be sure to read the following "Judges List" FAQ. Please pardon the length. Articles follow: Article xxxxx of news.admin.misc: From: judges[tm]@arch.ping.dk (NetNews Judges[TM] List) Newsgroups: news.admin.policy,comp.admin.policy,comp.security.misc,misc.legal.computing,news.admin.misc,news.groups.questions,news.groups,news.newusers.questions,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.current-events.net-abuse Subject: Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 95 16:29:13 +0100 (CET) Organization: NetNews Judges[TM] List Message-ID: <01050105.limupb@arch.ping.dk> Reply-To: judges[tm]@arch.ping.dk (NetNews Judges[TM] List) X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v2 Lines: 382 Cancel Messages: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Ver. 2.0 --------------------------------------------------------- Summary: You can protect your reputation as a information source by cancelling articles posted under your name as soon as you discover that they are erroneous. Cancelling other's articles, however, can expose you, your site, and the Net as a whole, to serious threats. The sender should be notified when articles need to be cancelled. Disputes or doubtful cases can be directed to the Judges' List for resolution. --------------------------------------------------------- List of Frequently Asked Questions *** Purpose of this document 1) What are cancel messages? 2) How have cancel messages been used? 3) When should I issue a cancel message? 4) When should I not issue a cancel message? 5) What should I do when in doubt about whether a cancel is appropriate? 6) What should I do if I receive a request to cancel one of my own messages? 7) How can I request that a message be cancelled when I can not do so myself? 8) What should I do if I suspect one of my posts has been improperly cancelled? 9) Why should I follow these guidelines? *** Cancellation request form *** Contributors to this FAQ --------------------------------------------------------- *** Purpose of this document This FAQ list serves as an introduction to cancel messages. More advanced information is presented in the document "Administration of Cancel Messages", which is directed to News system administrators. The objectives and operational procedures of Judges' List are specified and explained in the Judges-L FAQ, also available as the Welcome message for new subscribers to the List. 1) What are cancel messages? Cancel messages are special USENET messages from a class known as "Control" messages. Control messages don't result in postings for people to read. Instead, they give instructions to the USENET server software at each site that gets the message. A Cancel message is a control message that indicates that a particular message (named through its unique Message-ID) should be deleted. 2) How have cancel messages been used? Most commonly they are used when a person posts something they want to delete, correct, or retract. One can cancel an old message and optionally issue a new one. (There is a better way to cancel and re-issue called Superseding, but most user programs do not support it.) Cancels are sometimes used by moderators of moderated newsgroups to delete messages that should not have been posted. 3) When should I issue a cancel message? You should issue a cancel message if it becomes necessary to delete, correct, or retract one of your own posts. You can issue a cancel message to delete a forgery: A message posted by someone else, that appears to be from you. A forgery can often be cancelled by you as if it were your own article. Such cancels should be reported to the Judges' List (see below). Some victims of forgeries don't cancel them, but consider it sufficient to post disclaimers to the affected newsgroups alerting everyone to the forgery. This is wise, in any case, since the forged message is likely to be seen by many people, even if it is cancelled. The newsreaders rn, nn, and trn use "C" as the cancel command. In Rusnews type ":cancel" while reading the message to be deleted. 4) When should I not issue a cancel message? It is not appropriate to cancel an article posted by someone else. However, a forgery is an exception. A low-tech form of "forgery" is to insert fabricated quotes in an article. Such posts should be followed-up with a correction and the poster notified. Misattribution of quotations, as opposed to fabrication, is often a result of inferior news-reading software. Such posts can be followed-up with a correction and the poster should be notified. It is inappropriate to cancel someone else's writing simply because you find the opinions expressed offensive. You can, however, ask the author to cancel the offensive post. Your news-reading software should permit you to enter the names of offensive posters in a "kill" file. Then, you will not see articles from that person in the future. Ask your administrator to upgrade your software if your news-reading software does not have this capability. The poster should be asked to cancel a chain letter or a libelous article, or any other post, such as an advertisement or pyramid scheme, that has inappropriate content. A copy of the request should be directed to the postmaster at the originating site, if the content is unlawful. 5) What should I do when in doubt about whether a cancel is appropriate? Unless you are certain the poster is acting in bad faith, you should explain to the poster why you object to the post and ask that it be deleted. State that you are considering submitting a complaint to the Judges' List and explain how one can participate in the dispute-resolution process (see below). You may explain how the offending post, or a post that accomplishes the same objective, can be broadcast. One source of information is a list of Frequently Asked Questions, "How to find the right place to post (FAQ)" in the newsgroup "news.newusers.questions". If the post comes from your site, contact your postmaster or News administrator for an opinion about whether the article violates the site's usage agreement. Doubtful cases can be submitted to the Judges' List, for an opinion. A complaint to the Judges' List must include a: :complete copy of the offending post. :complete copy of your letter to the poster, requesting that the post be cancelled. : complete copy of any reply from the poster or a News administrator (only if permission to forward is not refused). The complaint must have a subject line that starts with the characters "COMPLAINT: ", followed by the subject of the offending post. If you receive additional information after submitting a complaint or wish to withdraw the complaint, the same subject line should be used. Mail the complaint to JUDGES-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu or JUDGES-L@UBVM.BITNET. If you wish to participate in the discussion of the complaint, email to LISTSERV@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu or LISTSERV@UBVM.BITNET with only the command: SUB JUDGES-L <your-name-here> in the message body. Replace the <your-name-here>, with your first and last name, in the above command. Before making comments on the List, please wait for someone to respond to your complaint. If there is no response within a week, it is most likely that you did not file a satisfactory complaint (see above). If you find no error in your complaint and the problem still has not been resolved, send an additional message asking for help. 6) What should I do if I receive a request to cancel one of my own messages? If you do not agree that the request is valid, reply to the request with your reasons for not cancelling. If the request does not mention the Judges' List, refer to this FAQ and ask that you be notified if a complaint is submitted. 7) How can I request that a message be cancelled when I can not do so myself? If your software does not permit cancellation, or you are not confident in using it, ask your administrator to issue a cancel message for you. 8) What should I do if I suspect one of my posts has been improperly cancelled? If you suspect that your post has been improperly cancelled, contact your News administrator to rule out the possibility of a technical failure. If there has been an improper cancel, complete documentation should be directed to the Judges' List. Follow the procedures for submitting a complaint, but replace the characters "COMPLAINT: " with "CANCEL: ". 9) Why should I follow these guidelines? If you do not cancel erroneous articles that you have posted, you waste readers' time and damage your own reputation as a reliable source. Consider an article posted to a typical newsgroup with 36,000 readers, a post that takes an average of 1 second for each reader to deal with (i. e., examining the subject line) uses a total of ten man-hours (36,000 seconds / 3,600 seconds/hour = 10 hours). If the article uses up an average of four seconds, then the total time expenditure is 40 hours, the equivalent of a work-week. This is probably the minimum time expenditure on any article that is even selected for scanning. Thus, a few minutes spent cancelling an article can save a lot of time for readers. Groups with a lot of erroneous articles tend to lose readers, and articles posted to those groups reach a limited audience. By cancelling erroneous posts, you also reduce the risk that your name will be entered in numerous kill files, thus limiting the audience you can reach with your posts. Posting of apologies for faulty articles, such as those with an empty body, is to be avoided, since this wastes even more time of the reader, without supplying useful information. If you abuse the cancel facility, by cancelling other's articles, you force people to take defensive actions. Many administrators have disabled cancels, because they have been abused. The disabling of cancels means that you will not be able to delete all copies of your own posts. Therefore, if you cancel an erroneous article and then post a corrected one, readers at certain sites will first see the erroneous one and then the corrected one. They may think that the corrected one is a duplicate and not read it. This situation is obviously of no benefit to posters or readers. If your site's administrator has disabled cancels, it is wise for you to notify your administrator when you issue a cancel, so at least it can be deleted at your site. Disabling of cancels does not prevent a cancel from working at all, since the cancel message can delete the cancelled article before it gets to a site where cancels are disabled. Therefore, a cancel will be most effective if it is issued immediately after the target article is posted. In some cases, robot posters have been used to immediately repost articles that have been cancelled. This can rapidly lead to a newsgroup being overloaded at a site where the cancel facility has been disabled. This type of conflict situation should be avoided, since it makes the newsgroup unusable for most readers. Cancel messages must be used with extreme care. If you cancel articles based upon their content, you expose your site to a legal risk, since it can then be argued that you are taking responsibility for all articles' content, some of which may violate copyright or pornography laws, for example. Originating sites already are exposed to this risk, therefore, they should be allowed to cancel such posts. They should also have a user agreement that permits them to discipline a user, thus ensuring that repeated postings of this type do not occur, and thereby reducing the legal risk at all News sites. This is not a hypothetical risk. Many sites have been closed down, had their equipment seized, and their operators prosecuted, and in some cases jailed. The effectiveness of a common-carrier or "bookstore" type of defense has yet to be established (But see Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>. INTERNET LIBEL: IS THE PROVIDER RESPONSIBLE? Internet World, Nov./Dec. 1993) [URL: ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/CAF/lawlibel_1.IW]. The use of non-originating site cancels, to control content of articles, reduces the chances that such a defense can ever be established. This could make the risk of operating a News site unacceptable. Some sites have already been prohibited from operating moderated newsgroups or mailing lists by their legal counsel, because of the legal risk associated with assuming responsibility for content of distributed messages. The damage to USENET caused by the most extreme case of abusive posting was much less than that caused by external threats, even when those threats did not directly result in disruption of a News site. Therefore, in doubtful cases, cancel messages should not be issued. Notification of authorities external to the Net should be avoided. Contacts to the Press should be left to those who have been trained in public relations or have equivalent experience. In order to minimize legal liability, you should in, first instance, try to stop abusive posting at the source. By objecting directly to a poster of offensive material and making the person aware of this FAQ, you reduce the chances of repeated abuse. In the case, that a poster refuses to comply with a request to cancel an article and you refer the matter to the Judges' List, the conflict can be resolved in a way which benefits the Net in the long term, and reduces the risk that you will be subject to retaliation, for example, by having your posts improperly cancelled. Complaints to the Judges' List also permits a database of repeat abusers to be built up, with much more effective resolution of such cases then becoming possible. *** Cancellation request form Sample reply to a poster requesting cancellation or explanation (not usable in cases where only the opinions expressed are offensive): --------------------------------------------------------------- I object to your post, because .... Please cancel this post and notify me that you have done so, or explain why you will not delete the post. Please note that any reply may be forwarded to the JUDGES-L list, unless explicit objection is given. If I get no response, I will submit a complaint to the Judges' List. If you wish to participate in the discussion of the complaint on that List, email to LISTSERV@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu or LISTSERV@UBVM.BITNET with only the command: SUB JUDGES-L <your-name-here> in the message body. Replace the <your-name-here>, with your first and last name, in the above command. --------------------------------------------------------------- *** Contributors to this FAQ include: Bob MacDowell <bobmacd@NETCOM.COM> Tim Pierce <twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu> David Stodolsky <david@arch.ping.dk> Dimitri Vulis <dlv@dm.com> ================================================ Posted on behalf of the NetNews Judges(TM) List. Judges-L Registrar, dss David S. Stodolsky, PhD * Social * Internet: david@arch.ping.dk Tornskadestien 2, st. th. * Research * Tel.: + 45 38 33 03 30 DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark * Methods * Fax: + 45 38 33 88 80 And now, the "Judges List" FAQ: