obnoxious mail

[Ken MacLeod]

In article <2024 at convex.UUCP>, tchrist at convex.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> which disallows this practice.  If you think alt.sources
> should be restricted, moderate it.  If not, stop bitching.

It seems we can't cancel the messages for people, we can't send them mail
requesting that they cancel them, what is there to do?

1)  Make the group "moderated", with the "charter" that anyone can add the
"Approved:" line.  This allows the experienced poster (or their sysadmin)
to post the article.  The novice's post will be sent to a "moderator",
which could just be a program that puts the article in alt.sources.d.
This would also help with inadvertent cross-postings.

2)  For my BBS, which is based on NetNews for the message base, I've set
up a script to allow my Aides or I to move articles from one set of
newsgroups to another.  The script cancels the original message, takes a
list of "from" newsgroups, removes them from "Newsgroups:", adds the
"to" newsgroups (if any) and reposts the article to the new set of
newsgroups (if there's still some left).
  The script uses a modified form of the original message-ID so that
moves by two or more people will be caught by the duplicate article
code, although there's no guarantee that any group of people will
come up with the same set of "from" and "to" groups :-).
  [Implementation note if anyone wants to write their own and still be
compatible with my code:  I add an 'a' to the end of the sequence number
before the '@' in the message-ID, successive moves of the same message
will pile up the 'a's.]
-- 
Ken MacLeod
ken at i-core.UUCP