33682 - [RFE] Third party cancels for SPAM

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I talked about this in the Mozilla irc chat, and someone talked to newsgroup 
admins about this. The admins said it would be a good idea. I got permission to 
post the RFE. Refer to the web page for information about SPAM and 3rd party 
cancels. 

There is so much SPAM on the usenet newsgroups. There is one way to fight back, 
by 3rd party cancelling. That means that you are not the poster and not the 
admin, but you can still cancel by writing a correct header and sending it to 
the newsgroup. Mozilla should have a way to automate this.

Of course, there is ettiquete in deleting posts. You must have good reason and 
tell people why. (The reasons can't be personal). Some common reasons are 
crossposting to too many groups, and off-topic SPAM. 

Although I am not experienced, it took me hours to delete a few postings (never 
tried again). A feature like that should cut it down to a minute or so.

Of course Mozilla should include some information (IE ettiquite and risks - 
like being banned) and make them click "Yes" they have read it before 
cancelling is allowed. It should tell people the newsgroups that are made for 
practicing cancelling such as alt.sex.cancel and alt.cancel. It should also 
point to the newsgroups that give info about cancelling and web pages about it. 
(Forget the newsgroup names)

Comment 1

[Jerry Baker]

Will never happen if I had to speculate. It is much easier than "a few hours" 
already. It takes about 20 seconds to kill a post that is not yours using 
Netscape as it is now. Not too hard.

Comment 2

[lchiang]

assign to helpwanted if someone wanted to implement this.

Comment 3

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Adding helpwanted keyword, since that's what was meant.

Comment 4

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Setting Future Milestone

Comment 5

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Someone please implement this? It wouldn't take long I think.

Comment 6

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Mass moving all NEWS bugs from esther to myself.

Comment 7

[Garth Wallace]

I don't think making third-party cancels easier would be a very good idea. It's
ripe for abuse. I think it would be better to have NoCeM support instead, as
that solves the same problem in a much more controlled (and voluntary) manner.

Comment 8

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I don't know exactly how NoCem works, but if supporting NoCeM would solve the 
spam problem that would be good. I tried reading some articles on NoCeM but 
none of them really explained how it worked. Perhaps you could post a link to 
something helpful on the topic that someone like me who doesn't know much about 
cancelling and is just reading this bug could understand. Thanks.

Comment 9

[Garth Wallace]

The NoCeM FAQ: http://www.cm.org/faq.html . O'Reilly's "Stopping Spam" also
covers this topic.

However, NoCeM support should probably be a different bug. I'll go file that now...

Comment 10

[Garth Wallace]

Support for NoCeM notices is now Bug #73075.

Comment 11

[Garth Wallace]

Third party cancellations violate section 13 of the GNKSA
(http://www.gnksa.org/gnksa.txt) "Allow users to both cancel and supersede their
own articles (and _no_ others!)":

> Any software that posts news SHOULD provide a command that the user can
> invoke to cancel her own articles.  It SHOULD also provide the option to
> supersede the user's own articles.  The software MUST guarantee that
> the user cannot cancel or supersede other people's articles, as far as
> possible.

In other words, a newsreader program is allowed (but not required) to let you
cancel your own articles, but is expressly forbidden to let you cancel other
people's articles. Adding the ability to do so would block bug #12699 (GNKSA
compliance).

With that in mind, I suggest that this bug be marked WONTFIX.

Comment 12

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

agreed.

Comment 13

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Thanks for picking that up.