🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello,
   I have followed this thread first with a bit of boredom, but now with
some interests.  I have thought about this and now feel that I have a few
things to say.  I know I am posting to all the places where bincancelled
occurred because I believe, IMHO, my arguments will have relevence
everywhere.  




In article <ARMM-Report-220.a@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us>, red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us
(Richard E. Depew) wrote:

> Binary posts do not belong in unmoderated discussion groups.

   I find a problem right here.  What does "unmoderated" mean?  I thought
"moderated" means that a person or a small group of people must authorize
a posting before it goes public while an "unmoderated" newsgroup mean that
authorization is not required.  With this bincancel bot, you are thus
giving yourself autorization to moderated, albeit in a limited way.  I
don't think any of these groups have given you permission to do this. 
Each USENET group, in itself, is a kind of society that runs its own
rules.  Do we now need to deal with you as well?

> I have issued 31 cancels for large binary files (average size 195,741
> characters - total size 6,067,999 characters) posted to 10 different
> unmoderated discussion groups in the comp, misc and rec hierarchies
> as follows:
   
   I am not sure of your time-line here.  I assume a week's worths of
cancellations.

   OK, you have saved us 6 megabytes of bandwidth.  Let's see how much
this really saved us.  I have about 5000 groups here.  For estimates,
let's say there about 1000 alt. groups, so total number of non-binaries
groups is about 4000.  Estimate about 100 posts a week, each with a 100
words, with 5 characters per word(including spaces and carriage returns). 
I think I am underestimating here.  That is 200,000,000 characters, or 200
megabytes.  So 200 + 6 = 206 megabytes worth of USENET data per week.  The
percentage that is taken out of the total data from your bincancel bot is
6 / 206 * 100 = 2.9%.  Brilliant.


   Let's say I have a department store that people shoplifts.  OK, I have
no security system right now, so 50% of my stuff that goes out of my store
are from theft, therefore killing my business.  So I install a nifty
magnetic detection system, which lowers this percentage to 10%.  Now my
store ( assmune that business is booming ) is really profitable.  Then I
think, hmm, I can reduce that to less tha 1% if I strip searched everybody
(assume that it is legal).  Wowzer, that would reallly be brilliant!  Ha! 
Unfortunately, it harasses innocent victims.  
 
   My point is, do we really need this bincancel when most of us don't
post useless binaries?  What if somebody was putting out a quicktime movie
on a nifty but diffucult to explain skydiving move in rec.skydiving?  Or a
nice graphics technique in another group?  

> If you must post a binary to Usenet, please post it to an appropriate
> binaries newsgroup such as alt.binaries.misc.  Then, if you like, post
> something in the appropriate discussion group telling people where to
> find the binary in the binaries group (a pointer to the binary).  This
> will permit news administrators and users to decide for themselves
> whether to receive the binary files.


   You may say, "but put it in alt.*.binaries."  Unfortunately not all of
us have access to alt.* groups.  If somebody posts a 100K binary once
every 2-3  months for important reasons and the binary in relevant to the
groups, then you should allow it!  Does such a group need a *.binaries
group for posting a 100k binary once or twice a month, or in the case of
rec.games.bolo, small binaries that amount to 20-30k a month?  I don't
think so.  Making a *.binaries group would hassle the end-users.  If they
post 12 100k files a month,like:

>   12 rec.games.programmer

then they should somehow make a binaries group, but these are exceptions.

   In the end, it comes down to who should moderate?  If everything were
truly "unmoderated" then there would be truly too much havoc, including
unwanted and irrelevent large binary postings.  The answer is that each
group, as a whole society, moderates the group.  What happens when we
actually do see an unwanted binary posting?  The USENET group gets
together and flames the person and he/she usually learns the lesson.  What
happened when those lawyers posted every USENET group for its own selfish
advertising?  ALL of USENET flamed them and we have not seen too many
since.

   I have seen some arguments about how all this bincancelling helps
news-administration.  I don't see how saving 2.9% of space really helps
them.  We news readers seem to do a good job ourselves regulating our own
newsgroups and preventing too much binaries from appearing in them.  In
the end we are paying the news-administrators, whether directly for
services or indirecly via businesses or school tuition.  

   Where does it end Richard?  Will you start cancelling 50k, 20k, or even
2k binary files?  Will you force groups that hardly have 20-30k binaries a
month or two to have some totally useless binaries USENET group that only
a few have access to?  How badly are you trying to save bandwidth?  How
about signatures longer than 5 lines?  You could probably get a bot to do
that.  I bet they cost more bandwidth than binaries.  How about people who
quote the whole 200-300 news post, but only have one line of comments in
the end?  I really hate those, but I usually just tell the user not to do
it again.

   I agree that bandwidth problems from binaries can be a problem, but
there are better ways to do it.  Please reconsider what you are doing
Richard.

Tony 
aka Hedgehog