Subject: Re: Pine, news, email, privacy

From: [email-masked] (Trey Harris)
Date: 1 Jan 1996 09:33:38 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
John Stanley <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I do not see such a mechanism in trn, which is a very common
>newsreader. You can "F" or you can "R", but there is no "FR".

The next time you type F or f in trn to post a followup, notice that there
is a "Cc:" line at the top.  The purpose of it is to send email at the
same time as you are posting news. 

>The issue is not one of receiving replies, and you should be smart
>enough to know that. It is one of getting those replies via a DIFFERENT
>mechanism than the original article.  When I post news, I look in news
>for replies. I don't ask for mail unless I think the answers are
>important enough to demand IMMEDIATE attention, which is what I have to
>give email. People who assume that any answer they give to any comment I
>make is important enough to demand immediate attention are assuming too
>much responsibility for themselves.

Whenever I ask a question with a specific answer on a technical newsgroup,
I ask for replies via email and explain that I will summarize responses. 
There are several benefits.  First, I can keep signal-to-noise on the
newsgroup to a minimum, by weeding through the responses in my mailbox and
posting a summary of responses (or sometimes just by explaining what
worked). 

Second, the amount of lag time between my posting, the post reaching
someone who knows the answer, and their post reaching me can be days. 
With the lag getting longer and the expiration period on newsgroups
getting shorter every month, being able to halve the amount of time for a
response is welcome. 

Third, there are many people (sometimes called "lurkers") who do not
choose to post but will send email.  If they answer my question, then that
is an answer I would not have received if I asked for all responses to be
sent to the newsgroup.  (Yes, this point isn't so solid because one may
say that such people would just email me anyway, but I'm not so sure
that's true.)

Fourth -- and for me, most important -- is that email waits for *me*.  As
a sysadmin, I can't plan for system failures and other times of duress,
and reading news is rather low on my list of priorities.  When I have to
work a seventy-hour week, I'm lucky to keep myself clean and fed -- I can
forget sleeping, let alone reading news.  If I'm away from news for a few
days, the article answering my question is likely to be gone.  My only
choices are to ask the question of the newsgroup again (which is rather
rude) or to wait until one of the archival services pick up the article
(which in my experience can take weeks). 

If everyone had high-speed lines and tens of gigabytes of storage on their
news spools, then I'd probably use news to solicit email responses much
less frequently; news alone would be quite acceptable.  But for asking
questions for which there is a specific answer ("is there a way to clear
the foobar database on a VZ/9000?") and I am interested in that answer,
and not discussion, I will continue to solicit email. 

I don't think we're disagreeing here; I, too, get irritated when I receive
email that was also posted and the author does not say so in the body of
the message.  But not so irritated as to killfile them in news. 

As for killfiling individuals in mail, that's another argument that I'm
not going to get into here.  I personally believe that killfiling an
individual's email is crass and tactless, the equivalent of totally
ignoring someone you know when you meet in person.  But that's a
disagreement for another day. 
-- 
Trey Harris                             http://sunsite.unc.edu/harris/
  System Administrator, Project Isis, Office of Information Technology
                       The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Jan 1996 12:36:08 -0800

> disagreement for another day. 

You are fortunate to not have encountered some of the people I have sending
me e-mail.  I hope you will remain so fortunate.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])     http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 2 Jan 1996 17:27:30 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>same time as you are posting news. 

The statement I replied to was to the effect that it was no harder to
reply as the poster wished than to reply normally. In this case, the
poster was asking for email copies of followups. I consider having to
locate the proper email address and type it in to be much harder than
just typing "F".

>There are several benefits.  

That's nice. That isn't the issue being discussed. If you read the
paragraph you quoted, you might have noticed that it dealt with people
sending mail and posting.

>Fourth -- and for me, most important -- is that email waits for *me*.  As

That's nice. For me, email is brought to my attention immediately (if
I am logged in) and requires that I at least look at who it is from to
determine if it is something that requires more attention. Some dork
sending me mail with a copy of his news article is an interruption I 
don't need. I will see his article in news. If I don't, and I have
considered the topic important enough, it will be caught by my news
agent. 

>and reading news is rather low on my list of priorities.  

Mine too. That is why getting copies of articles by mail is a waste of
time. Someone has decided for me that his article should be high on my
priority list. Even if all it says is "me too".

>If I'm away from news for a few

So get an agent to scan news for important things and have it save them
for you. It isn't rocket science. It took me an afternoon to write one.
It isn't perfect, but when I left town for three weeks right at the
beginning of a discussion, I didn't worry a bit about missing anything.
It was waiting for me when I got back.

>and not discussion, I will continue to solicit email. 

Good for you. And there will be people who will ignore your question
because they think your solicitation is rude, or who will post anyway.
You make your choice, they make theirs.

>the message.  But not so irritated as to killfile them in news. 

Excuse me? Where did I say I killfile them in news? 

>ignoring someone you know when you meet in person.  

Email is not meeting someone in person. If you think it is crass and
tasteless to reject email from crass and tasteless people who refuse to
stop sending copies of news articles, well, that's your opinion and I
am not going to let it bother me.

---

From: [email-masked] (Trey Harris)
Date: 3 Jan 1996 04:47:50 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Russ Allbery  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> I personally believe that killfiling an

Perhaps.  Note I did say "individuals."  When you say "people", do you
mean the same?  I have been forced to killfile mail from some of these
advertising groups, especially those that routinely send all mail from an
unreplyable address.  My usual method of dealing with these, to contact
postmaster at their address and postmaster at whichever site InterNIC says
is giving them access, works less and less frequently these days -- I
guess these assholes are getting more and more savvy about how to avoid
proper netiquette (and accountability) entirely. 

But in most cases, email I don't want to receive can be split into two
camps:  harrassing email with no content (I consider unsolicited adverts
to fall into this class), and email with content I don't want to read.  
In the first case, I feel comfortable killfiling the address, provided 
that the address is not one of my users.  A mailbomb is an example that I 
think is beyond question.  But in the second case, I have difficulty just 
shutting the person up.  In my judgment, I don't want to hear what they 
have to say -- now.  But what if that person needs to tell me about a 
security problem involving my site, or tell me some equally legitimate 
item?

In the past month, I've had to deal with two of my users who accidentally
broke a rule on two sites (MUDs, or BBS's or something).  Neither had any
malice at heart, they were just new to the net and computers in general
and didn't know better.  After they broke these rules, the operators -- I
hesitate to call them "administrators" -- of both sites took the same
action and banned our entire site (with over 27,000 users!). 

In one case, the user contacted me, and I contacted the operator and
explained what was going on.  The operator apologized for the 
misunderstanding, explained that the mistake my user made looked like a 
common way some users caused mischief on her site, and opened access back 
to our site.  I warned my user to read all the helpfiles available on an
unfamiliar site before gallavanting around it, and that was the end of 
the story.

The other case wasn't so rosy.  This user didn't come to me, instead he
took matters into his own hands, and started sending very nasty email to
the operator of the site.  The operator killfiled him.  He got one of his
friends -- another undergraduate -- to send the operator email
complaining.  The operator killfiled her, as well.  Even then the user
didn't come to me.  Instead, I had to learn about it through the
complaints of twenty or so of my users for whom this was a favorite site. 

I did some investigating and learned the above story.  As far as I was
concerned, my user had behaved inappropriately and I was not going to go
to bat for him.  However, my other users had done nothing wrong, and to
shut off access to potentially 27,000 people because of the actions of one
seemed a bit rash.  I assumed the operator simply did not know that my
site had so many users.  Perhaps I could convince the operator that
disabling the user instead of the site was a better way to handle this. 

I sent the operator email, and was frustrated to learn that he had
killfiled not just the two people who had sent him harassing email, not
just my entire site, but the entire unc.edu domain!  I had to pass email 
through a third party -- the postmaster of the operator's domain -- just 
to get the killfile released.

(I suppose, given this inauspicious beginning, I should have seen it
coming, but I was surprised when the operator chose not to follow my
suggestion.  He kept reciting, almost like a mantra, "It's my site, I'll
do what I want.  Maybe I made a mistake, but I'm not going to change it
because it's my site, I'll do what I want..."  Even after I informed him
that my user would be disciplined for the harrassing mail, he maintained
his ban on my site.)

So what am I trying to say with these stories?  That only s.o.b.'s
killfile people?  No; rather, my job -- the job of *communication* -- was
made ridiculously difficult because some idiot decided that he was better
than me, better than anyone at my site, and would have nothing to do with
anything any of us had to say. 

As far as I'm concerned, the benefit gained from establishing killfiles
against an individual's email is close to nil.  The costs are much
greater. 

I'm afraid setting up killfiles for mail from individuals -- real people 
-- feels to me like the king granting audience only to the worthy.
-- 
Trey Harris                             http://sunsite.unc.edu/harris/
  System Administrator, Project Isis, Office of Information Technology
                       The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: 03 Jan 1996 01:38:43 -0800

> proper netiquette (and accountability) entirely. 

Yes, I do mean individuals; I haven't killfiled any advertising groups in
mail simply because I rarely seem to receive mail from the same source
twice.  The situation that I encounter is that I killfile someone in news
who is being abusive, blatently off-topic, or otherwise is not producing
anything I am interested in reading, and said person (apparently figuring
out that they are in my killfile in news) starts responding to various
postings I make (not in response to him) in e-mail.  The e-mail has the
same complete lack of content and abusive language as the posts, so I
killfile him in e-mail as well.

In this case, I do not consider complaining to the person's postmaster to
be appropriate.  I firmly believe that if I post to Usenet, anyone is
entitled to send me an e-mail response to my post.  There is simply no
guarantee that I'm going to read that e-mail.  People also can be abusive
if they wish; I just don't have to listen to it.

> to fall into this class), and email with content I don't want to read.

I wouldn't killfile e-mail just because I don't like what the person is
saying.  In that case, the e-mail is almost always a response to a post of
mine, and I'll respond with a short message saying that I have no desire
to discuss the issue via private e-mail, and that I would prefer that they
post.  I may ignore further e-mail on the same subject, but I wouldn't
killfile them for that.

I have been known to killfile in mail people who insist on sending me
copies of any followup they make to my posts without marking the e-mail
copy as a copy.  (Insist meaning that they do it repeatedly with full
knowledge of my preferences.)  I consider that harassment without
meaningful content (since the content is redundant).

Note that I said "without marking the e-mail copy as a copy."  I prefer
not to receive e-mailed copies at all, but if it's marked as a copy, it's
only a minor annoyance.

> But what if that person needs to tell me about a security problem
> involving my site, or tell me some equally legitimate item?

I should point out that my incoming mail is split according to which
address the mail was sent to, and administrative mail or any mail sent to
a work address is not subjected to any form of score file.  That means
that even people I am ignoring entirely will still be able to reach me if
it is a work-related matter, unless they incorrectly send me work mail to
my personal e-mail address (this one).

> killfile people?  No; rather, my job -- the job of *communication* --
> was made ridiculously difficult because some idiot decided that he was
> better than me, better than anyone at my site, and would have nothing to
> do with anything any of us had to say.

Yes, I agree there, which is why I always maintain a separate address that
isn't subjected to any form of killfiles so that people with these kinds
of issues can reach me.  I don't advertise it in my .sig, since I would
prefer not to receive responses to newsgroup posts at that address, but it
is publically available from various obvious locations, so I have no doubt
that someone such as yourself would be able to find it with little
trouble.

---

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Rasku)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 23:34:00 -0800

[email-masked] wrote:

>A very good point, since the person asking the question was posting with
>Free Agent, which has no killfile ability (the commercial release, Agent,
>will, however.  Free Agent is the free version of Agent).
>
>Netscape (aka Mozilla) doesn't have killfile ability, either (also, neither
>one have the ability to cancel your own posts, AFAIK).

Agent has the ability to cancel your own posts.  I don't know if Free
Agent does though.

...Stephen 	[Save Bandwidth.  Ban .sig Lines]

---

From: WEEVEY <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 17:23:58 -0500 (EST)

So how do I write a 'killfile' for Pine?

Eva

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 08:57:10 +0000 (GMT)

You don't at the moment: Pine 3.91 has no concept of kill files.

Your closest approximation (for e-mail only, not Usenet News) would be to 
run your arriving mail through a filter program such as "procmail" to 
weed out messages whose subject/author you don't want to see.

Cheers,

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

---

From: WEEVEY <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 04:06:49 -0500 (EST)

Well, I don't have 'procmail' on this system.  Is their some other way?  
I use the 'limited' gateway on CRIS.

Eva

@}---------- THE SIMMONS FACTOR --------- EVA SABRINA SIMMONS, PH.D. -------{@
        WWW Personal Page:  http://www.cris.com/~Weevey/index.html
@}---- @}---- @}---- WATCH IT, OR IT MIGHT ATTACK!! ;) ---{@ ---{@ ---{@ ---{@

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 10:02:02 +0000 (GMT)

You need to find (on your system or on the Net) software that can be used 
with your mail delivery system's delivery mechanism.  Basically most UNIX 
systems allow the mail deliverer program to pipe the arriving message 
through a program rather than writing the message directly into the 
recipient's mailbox.  The program the message is piped through can then 
inspect the content and decide where to file the message (or junk it!).

If you don't have procmail on your system there may be an equivalent, 
such as "filter".  Try rummaging around or (shock, horror!) ask your 
help desk/system manager/service provider for assistance.  After all 
_they_ should now what is available on your system (I don't!).

If the worst comes to the worst you could consider ftp-ing procmail from 
an archive site on the net, and compilinig it up yourself.  It doesn't 
need any special privileges, as far as I am aware, if you want to place 
it in and use it from your own disk area.

Good luck!

---

From: WEEVEY <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 05:32:09 -0500 (EST)

I just checked on 'procmail' and discovered it was written in C.  I can't 
compile C programs on this system...:(  Any other ideas...?

Eva