The sbay.* newsgroups are a regional news hierarchy covering the
South Bay/Silicon Valley Area of Northern California.
All regional hierarchies on UseNet were created for the use of their
local areas and may have additional rules of use.
The sbay.* newsgroups do have additional restrictions which were put
in place as a result of past abuses.
Primarily, all the sbay.* newsgroups have a requirement that articles
must be at least partly specific to the South Bay Area and applicable
to the topic of the newsgroup.
Each newsgroup also has its own more detailed charter which extends this
basic requirement.
The charters are the rules and must be followed.
Any member of the local community may respond via e-mail to charter violations.
If parts of a charter are found to be undesirable or become outdated,
changes may be implemented via local discussion and consensus
in sbay.news.group.
As with most local news hierarchies,
there is no voting procedure for creating new newsgroups.
Discussion in sbay.news.group is the determining factor on whether
a newsgroup will be created or not.
- Anyone with a proposal for a new sbay.* newsgroup should post an
article in sbay.news.group.
- Expect the discussion to change your proposal.
- The sbay.* hierarchy administrators will observe for evidence
that the discussion convinces other people to support it.
(So be on your best behavior!)
- If there appear to be sufficient support in the community for the
proposal, the newsgroup will be created by the administrators.
Please be sure to take into account whether a given subject is already
covered by an existing newsgroup in sbay.*, ba.* or any global hierarchies.
Operational and day-to-day decisions regarding the sbay.* newsgroups
are made by the newsgroup coordinator in accordance with the newsgroup
policies.
Decisions regarding the newsgroup policies
and final decisions in the newsgroup creation process
are made as internal decisions by sbay.org,
by sbay.org participants according to the
decision-making guidelines
in the
sbay.org policies.
The priority levels of the decision-making process define who has
responsibility to make decisions regarding policy amendments
and to carry out the newsgroup creation process.
People at higher levels of priority must hear and should consider inputs
from those in lower priorities.
The decision-making may be delegated from a higher-priority to the
next-lower priority.
- News administrators within sbay.org have highest priority.
- The newsgroup coordinator has second-highest priority.
- Other volunteers have the third priority, including newsgroup founders,
CancelCritter reviewers, and any others who perform maintenance actions
for the newsgroups as delegated by sbay.org's newsgroup coordinator.
- The lowest priority included in the decision-making process includes
administrators of sbay.org sites who would be affected by the decision and
are not already included in a higher priority.
The policy on advertising in sbay.* is different for local and non-local
articles.
Advertisements which do not have and state any specific relation to the
South Bay Area are prohibited in the sbay.* newsgroups.
Advertisements which are specific to the South Bay Area are allowed but
have some restrictions. Ads may not be reposted with the same or similar
content within a 4-week period because many news servers keep articles for
their own local newsgroups for a longer expiration period.
Ads which are different or significantly updated but from the same
organization should not be posted more often than 2 weeks after the
previous one, in order to make efficient use of network bandwidth.
For the most efficient use of network bandwidth, advertisements should use
the World-Wide Web instead of UseNet, because WWW is more efficient for
wide-area or targeted broadcasts.
There is a Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ) on advertising on UseNet at
http://www.danger.com/advo.html.
There are currently no moderated newsgroups in the sbay.* hierarchy.
Standard UseNet netiquette guidelines apply.
(See the news.announce.newusers
newsgroup.)
As with any other unmoderated newsgroup,
conflicts should be avoided.
When they occur, they should be resolved among the residents -
the sbay.* hierarchy administrators will not intervene
except to oppose cases of net abuse.
When serious conflicts arise, the newsgroup participants may make guidelines
using input from all sides toward avoiding repetition of the conflicts.
These agreements then become part of the policy for the newsgroup(s).
After the sbay.* newsgroups were opened up for the world to carry,
we began to experience problems with spamming in some of our
newsgroups, especially sbay.forsale.
In about 9 months, the traffic volume from net abuse grew to the
point that local readers were obviously going away and not reading
the sbay.* newsgroups any more.
Discussion dropped to next to nothing.
This puts us in an awkward position.
We don't want to go to some of the extremes that some self-appointed
net.police go to.
But it was getting pretty obvious that if no action was taken,
the newsgroups would have died out.
The sbay.* hierarchy administrators have begun a more active approach
to oppose net abuse in the sbay.* newsgroups.
This policy attempts to strike a balance between
one side with self-restraint and caution
and the other side with firm enforcement of
newsgroup policy.
- Since the worst offending articles are cross-posted to an
excessive number of *.forsale newsgroups, they are simple for a program
to recognize so we have developed the
sbay.* CancelCritter.
The use of a program to make these decisions makes it more objective.
- Articles which contain nothing at least partly specific to the
South Bay area are also in violation of the local-use implication of each
of the sbay.* newsgroups' charters.
For articles in this category, the administrators send e-mail explaining
the local-use policy and asking them not to post out-of-the-area materials
in the sbay.* newsgroups.
These messages also include warnings that if the activity continues,
the CancelCritter is available to enforce it.
(See the "repeat offender" policy below.)
Since the time the CancelCritter
(originally known as the sbay.* cancelbot)
was launched on November 1, 1995,
all the periodically-recurring abusive articles have been stopped.
One-on-one e-mail communications with other net abusers,
now usually people posting for their first time on UseNet,
has resulted in most of them respecting the wishes
of our community and choosing
not to post in the sbay.* newsgroups.
(And we hope we're educating some not to spam at all.)
By mid-December 1995, some discussion had begun to return to the newsgroups.
However, the recovery phase has continued since then
because this problem didn't develop overnight.
But at least the recovery has begun!
This section presents and defines of the kinds of net abuse which
are being actively opposed by the sbay.* newsgroup community.
All the forms of net abuse listed here deal with posted UseNet articles.
If you're looking for ideas on how to oppose an e-mail spam you may have
received, try the
Blacklist of Internet Advertisers page.
In all cases of abuse, first contact the originator,
then their site administrators,
before resorting to posting negative public statements about them.
(Never e-mail-bomb a net abuser - that's net abuse itself.)
Some are posting on UseNet or using the Internet
for the first time and usually have not been given
any instructions about netiquette from their Internet provider.
A polite, firm, and well-written response is often sufficient
to educate them not to "spam the Net" again.
- Nonlocal Articles (formerly listed as Out-of-the-area Soliciation/OOTAS)
- This is only a concern in local-area newsgroups so the
news.admin.net-abuse followers don't have a common derrogatory term
(such as "spam" or "velveeta") for it.
But in local newsgroup hierarchies, this is the main issue.
Solicitations from outside the area are usually part
of the commission of an EMP (spam) or ECP (velveeta).
Generally, the people who do this are motivated by all the "forsale" or
"market" newsgroups they see when they get new Internet access.
They usually either don't know that it's wrong or
greed makes them pursue it anyway.
The effect when lots of people do this is to make it difficult,
if not impossible, to sustain local discussions and keep the readers
subscribed to the newsgroups.
Most new users don't have the experience to know the prime question
behind all of UseNet netiquette,
"If everyone did what I'm thinking of doing,
would UseNet be a better place?"
The answer is pretty obvious, since we just narrowly avoided letting
this situation get far enough to kill off the local discussion in the
sbay newsgroups.
No, it would not make UseNet a better place.
The relatively few people who do out-of-the-area solicitations are having a
profoundly negative impact on the Net.
We used to abbreviate this violation "OOTAS"
for "out-of-the-area solicitation".
The term has always been awkward and unintuitive.
Since there is essentially no difference in use any more between
an out-of-the-area solitication and a non-local article,
we simplified the term in July 2000 to be just "Nonlocal"
(capitalized to indicate we use the term as a category name.)
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
Unless another reason (such as ECP, EMP, or repeat offender)
makes it cancellable,
first-time commisions of Nonlocal articles `are responded to by e-mail.
This e-mail constitutes a warning and should also include some
instruction about netiquette.
A second offense after a warning invokes the
"repeat offender" policy.
By definition,
Nonlocal article policy does not apply to residents of the South Bay Area.
Since the South Bay/Silicon Valley Area is a significant part
of the economy of Northern and Central California,
the sbay.* newsgroup coordinators
give the benefit of the doubt to residents of the surrounding region.
However, e-mails discouraging distant advertising may still be sent to them,
though without a warning of future article cancellation.
Specifically, the part of California included is the
counties
north of and including Monterey, Fresno and Mono Counties.
Economic ties also include San Luis Obispo as a borderline case.
- Excessive Multiple-Posting (EMP)
- EMP is known on the net by the derrogatory term "spam".
If you post the same or similar article text 20 times
or in 20 different newsgroups, you are spamming.
People literally all over the world
(from Australia and Korea to Finland, with lots in North America too)
will cancel your articles with the full support of most of the Net.
Other numerical combinations can reach the same result.
Spam is not based on the content of the article but, rather,
just on the numbers of copies of the article posted and to how many
newsgroups.
See the newsgroups
news.admin.net-abuse.announce
and
news.admin.net-abuse.misc
for more information about the "Breidbart Index" (BI)
used to compute the threshold for violating this criteria.
If the BI exceeds 20, your articles are cancellable on sight.
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
Spam is not generally determined as such by the sbay.* administrators.
The wide multiple-posting is outside the scope of this policy to catch on
a first offense, though other people around the world do take an interest
in it.
Usually the response for a first-time Nonlocal articles takes care of
this type of article when posted in an sbay newsgroup
and the repeat offender policy takes over after a second one.
- Excessive Cross-Posting (ECP)
- ECP is known on the net by the derrogatory term "velveeta".
If you post a single article to lots of different newsgroups,
usually 20 or more, then you are committing "velveeta".
The limits vary because often these are also posted to local-area
newsgroups, which are allowed to set their own limits for
acceptable use.
Some local area hierarchy coordinators respond to this by just simply
cancelling the article including, of course, on all the newsgroups it
was cross-posted to since you can't separate them.
However, cancelling someone's article without making an attempt to notify
them is arguably net abuse in itself.
When the
sbay.* CancelCritter
cancels an article because it is programmaticaly identified as
excessively cross-posted,
it sends an e-mail to the poster if a reply address was provided.
(Of course, some people know they're doing something wrong and make it
impossible to reply, in which case no attempt is made.)
Also, the cancel control message from the CancelCritter includes a
list of reasons for the cancellation.
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
Velveeta is automatically recognized and cancelled by the
sbay.* CancelCritter.
According to this policy, the program's configuration is maintained
to correspond to the levels permissible for auto-cancellation.
It operates unattended but reports all activity to an
administrative mail list.
Members of the sbay.* community may request to be added to the mail list
if they wish to audit its activity or monitor its performance.
- Re-posting old articles
- Significant numbers of re-posted old articles are known on the Net
by the derrogatory term "spew".
This usually only happens in the case of a malfunction or operator error,
such as restoring a backup of a news spool disk
(you should never back up NetNews articles, for this reason)
or a gateway between UseNet and a non-RFC1036 news system fails to
stop articles originating from UseNet from being sent back out as if
they were new messages.
Spew is a pure waste of network bandwidth. For that reason,
it is generally agreed to be cancellable on sight.
Please also make an effort to politely but quickly alert the originating site
of the problem -
that's the only way to prevent more from being sent out.
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
Spew in an sbay.* newsgroup may be cancelled on sight by any member
of the sbay.* community.
Cancel controls must state a reason and provide a non-anonymous address
to contact the poster of the cancel. It is also recommended
to send e-mail to the poster and/or their site's news admins.
When recognized, the system which is the
source of the spew will be added to the
sbay.* CancelCritter's
auto-cancel list as long as spew articles continue to arrive.
The site will be removed from the list when it is confirmed repaired and
spew articles have clearly stopped.
- Binaries in non-binary newsgroups
- Binary articles such as pictures, sound and animations are usually
very large. They take time to transmit on the modems which people use
to exchange news.
Some sites deliberately do not include binary newsgroups in their
newsfeed because the transmission time costs them money.
This, more so than most other wastes of network bandwidth,
is a serious economic issue for people who have news feeds at home
or at small commercial or non-profit sites.
So, if you post a binary in a non-binary newsgroup,
it's cancellable on sight.
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
There are no binary newsgroups in the sbay.* hierarchy.
There is a zero-tolerance policy for binaries.
Binaries in an sbay.* newsgroup may be cancelled on sight by any member
of the sbay.* community.
Cancel controls must state a reason and provide a non-anonymous address
to contact the poster of the cancel. It is also recommended
to send e-mail to the poster and/or their site's news admins.
The CancelCritter also automatically cancels some binaries.
For cases that aren't obvious enough to trigger the CancelCritter,
posters are immediately added to the auto-cancel list and
all prior instances of their binaries are re-run though the CancelCritter.
The posters may remove themselves from the auto-cancel list in the
same procedure as the
"repeat offender" policy.
Binaries result in an sbay.* UDP on a first offense so, if you cancel one,
please e-mail the headers to the sbay.* newsgroups coordinators at
critter@sbay.org so the CancelCritter can be configured to auto-cancel the
poster.
- Well-known Scam: Make Money Fast (MMF)
- If you post a message with a title, "Make Money Fast",
it won't live very long and your mailbox will be filled with
hateful flame mail from the people who did see it before it was cancelled.
If this sounds surprising to you, keep reading...
In 1985 someone wrote a pyramid scam in a chain letter and
posted it on UseNet.
(Both pyramid scams and chain letters are illegal in the USA and
most countries around the world.)
Over the course of more than a decade, people have been trying to
stomp it out.
Unfortunately, every time someone posts it, it seems like someone else
sees it before the cancels go out. And the cycle starts over as they
follow the instructions to post it to ten more newsgroups.
Today, as UseNet articles are available via CD-ROM and some sites
do not honor cancel messages, the "MMF" scam is still available
for unwary new users to follow.
Besides being stupid, chain letters are illegal.
The United States Postal Service's Postal Inspector has more information
online at
"http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm".
The sbay.* CancelCritter
is one of hundreds of automated programs around the world that
will cancel an MMF at the moment it arrives on the system,
and propagate the cancel instructions rapidly to other news sites.
Implementation in sbay.* policy:
There is a zero-tolerance policy for MMF.
MMF in an sbay.* newsgroup may be cancelled on sight by any member
of the sbay.* community.
Cancel controls must state a reason and provide a non-anonymous address
to contact the poster of the cancel. It is also recommended
to send e-mail to the poster and/or their site's news admins.
The CancelCritter also automatically cancels anything with the subject
"Make Money Fast". Upper or lower case does not matter.
Due to the need for rapid response,
there are no exceptions for other articles with that subject even
if they're not the MMF scam.
MMF results in an sbay.* UDP on a first offense so, if you cancel one,
please e-mail the headers to the sbay.* newsgroups coordinators at
critter@sbay.org so the CancelCritter can be configured to auto-cancel the
poster.
This summarizes who is allowed by the sbay.* policies to issue cancels,
since some of the types of abuse listed above are handled by the
sbay.* newsgroup coordinators and other are subject to zero-tolerance
policies and cancellable by any resident of the South Bay Area who
has the experience to do so.
Remember: These only apply to messages which are posted or
cross-posted in the sbay.* newsgroups.
These policies are void for articles not appearing in any sbay.* newsgroup.
Consult the applicable newsgroup charters and the
Net Abuse FAQ before cancelling articles in any newsgroup.
- Nonlocal cancels are handled by the sbay.* newsgroup coordinators
to avoid a mob situation.
- EMP and ECP cancels are handled by the sbay.* newsgroup coordinators.
UseNet-wide spam cancellers are also authorized to issue spam cancels for
the sbay.* newsgroups.
- repeat offender cancels and sbay UDPs
are handled by the sbay.* newsgroup coordinators.
- spew cancels may be done by any
sufficiently-experienced member of the South Bay community.
- MMF and binary cancels may be done by any
sufficiently-experienced member of the South Bay community.
If you cancel one of these,
please e-mail a copy of the article headers to the sbay.* coordinators
at critter@sbay.org because MMF and binaries carry UDP penalties.
Cancellation requests from members of the community
to the sbay.* newsgroup coordinators
should be directed to critter@sbay.org.
Cancels issued by members of the community
must state a reason and provide a non-anonymous address
to contact the poster of the cancel. It is also recommended
to send e-mail to the poster and/or their site's news admins.
The sbay.* CancelCritter
is an automated "cancelbot"
was developed at the requests of many sbay.* readers.
It operates under the authority of
the sbay.* newsgroup hierarchy coordinators.
It is an effort to enforce the local-use policy which has been
blatantly abused by people outside the area.
All regional newsgroup hierarchies are experiencing this problem
and many are taking varying measures to curb the problem.
However, the CancelCritter will not touch messages which are not posted to
sbay.* newsgroups.
So people who insist on spamming the *.forsale newsgroups are still able to
do so without interference from the sbay CancelCritter if they omit all
sbay.* newsgroups from their articles.
(Of course, spammers are net abusers by definition so they can expect
resistance from other sources too.)
The CancelCritter uses the following parameters.
We list them here for the purpose of public disclosure.
However, we know the risk of publishing this information
so these are subject to change without notice.
(The situation has stabilized now that articles modified and re-posted
specifically to circumvent the CancelCritter immediately qualify the poster
as a repeat offender.)
These are the current policies regarding thresholds for
automatically-cancellable articles.
- Any article cross-posted to more than a few
non-local
newsgroups with the same or similar suffix
as the sbay.* newsgroups it's posted to
will be auto-cancelled.
For example, if sbay.forsale is in the list, all
non-local newsgroups with
*.forsale, *.market, etc. count against the total.
(Included with initial version on November 1, 1995)
- As a slightly-stricter version of the same idea,
the CancelCritter has been configured with a list of recognizably-distant
newsgroups.
If there are more than a few newsgroups
in the recognizably-distant (or global) hierarchies
which have a similar suffix to the cross-posted sbay.* newsgroup(s),
the message will be cancelled.
(Introduced November 3, 1995)
- If there are an excessive number of newsgroups (with any suffix)
in the recognizably-distant (or global) hierarchies,
in addition to at least one sbay.* newsgroup,
the message will be cancelled.
(Introduced December 3, 1995)
- Any article cross-posted to more than a specific limit of
non-local
newsgroups in addition to at least one sbay.* newsgroup
will be auto-cancelled.
(Included with initial version on November 1, 1995)
- Any article cross-posted to more than a specific limit of
newsgroups including at
least one sbay.* newsgroup will be auto-cancelled.
(Included with initial version on November 1, 1995)
- If the message was posted in at least one sbay.* newsgroup
by a user who has been identified as a
"repeat offender"
against this policy,
it will be cancelled.
A user or site can be categorized as a repeat offender or abusive user if...
- a person posts an excessively cross-posted (ECP) or
excessively multiple-posted (EMP) article to the sbay.* groups.
- a person re-posts an article
which had been cancelled by the CancelCritter
and was not at least partly specific to the South Bay Area,
modifying the article primarily in a way that circumvents the CancelCritter.
- a site, especially one with no South Bay users,
fails or refuses to prevent its users from breaking this policy,
after a series of inappropriate articles originate from that site.
- a person posts an article which is "Nonlocal",
an out-of-the-area solicitation (OOTAS)
or any indication can be found that their
article is not from or about the South Bay Area.
The procedure to remove oneself from this most severe category
requires, in effect, to be rehabilitated from Net abuse.
The repeat offender must write an e-mail to critter@sbay.org
with an apology and agreeing to comply with the wishes of the community,
as described in these newsgroup hierarchy policies.
If the apology and agreement are convincing
(which may not be possible if such an agreement
has been made and broken before),
the site or user will be removed from the CancelCritter's
repeat-offender auto-cancel list.
When the program counts local and non-local newsgroups,
the following newsgroup hierarchies, covering Northern California,
are considered "local".
All other newsgroup hierarchies are non-local and are counted by
the CancelCritter against the non-local cross-posting thresholds.
(There are others in the area which may be private, commercial, etc but the
limit of non-local similar-suffix newsgroups was set high enough
to cover their normal use, and then some.)
- sbay.*
- South Bay/Silicon Valley Area,
Santa Clara County and nearby vicinity
(see
sbay.org Home Page)
- su.*
- Stanford University
- ucb.*
- University of California, Berkeley
- ucd.*
- University of California, Davis
(see
UC Davis UseNet FAQ)
- scruz.*
- Santa Cruz County, northern Monterey Bay Area
- ccc.*
- Contra Costa County, East Bay, Concord/Livermore areas
- monterey.*
- Monterey County and Monterey Bay Area
- sonoma.*
- Sonoma County, North Bay/Wine Country
- yolo.*
- Yolo County, southwestern Sacramento Valley
(see
Yolo County, CA UseNet FAQ)
- sac.*, sacramento.*
- Sacramento area
(see
Sacramento, CA UseNet FAQ)
- chico.*
- Chico area
- davis.*
- Davis area
(see
Davis, CA UseNet FAQ)
- slo.*
- San Luis Obispo area
- ba.*
- San Francisco Bay Area: Peninsula, North Bay, South Bay, East Bay
and surrounding areas of Northern and Central California
- ca.*
- State of California
(see California UseNet Project)
In an effort to handle article cancellations as responsibly as possible...
- the cancel control message contains an explanation,
- an attempt is made to contact the poster via e-mail
(though some spammers deliberately make this impossible),
and
- an administrative mail list is made available in case
changes need to be made to accomodate a legitimate need.
However, the thresholds have been set high enough that it is hard to imagine
how something crossing them could not be net abuse -
it is deliberately erring on the side of caution.
Administrative requests regarding the
sbay.* CancelCritter
should be directed to
critter@sbay.org.
Updated January 21, 2012
webmaster@sbay.org
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