From: lcs Mixmaster Remailer <mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 22:00:06 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: kickouts done the Cypherpunks way...
In-Reply-To: <199611250134.TAA23699@manifold.algebra.com>
Message-ID: <199611250600.BAA04274@anon.lcs.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> Suppose Mr. X, owner of foobarpunks mailing list, wants to kick out Mr. Y,
> for his obnoxious letters to the mailing list.
> 
> Mr. X, however, is concerned that Mr. Y would subscribe through some
> proxy address and would continue replying to messages to foobarpunks.
> 
> It is assumed that the only person out of the whole universe, Mr. Y, 
> cannot be trusted. The problem is that X does not know which of the 
> subscribers is Mr. Y.
> 
> The question is, is there a technical way to disable Mr. Y from
> reading the list, or detect which subscription address is a proxy for Y?

The answer is no.  Plenty of sites gate mailing lists to local
newsgroups, and allow open or relatively open NNTP access.  It's also
silly to assume every other person in the universe is trustworthy.

If Mr. Y sends lots of obnoxious mail to a mailing list or news group,
the proper thing to do is to put Mr. Y in your killfile and encourage
others to do so.  That way you don't get bothered by his annoying
messages, and if enough people follow suit, people stop responding to
Mr. Y's messages.  This can be even be extended to cover anonymous
posts using NoCeM-like systems.

If you try to boot Mr. Y off the mailing list using technical means,
several bad things will happen:  First of all you will fail, which
will give Mr. Y a great deal of satisfaction.  Second of all, you will
drive Mr. Y to start posting under different names, making him
considerably harder to killfile.  Third of all, you will double the
traffic on the mailing list by starting flamewars about whether this
failed booting attempt was ethical, legal, intelligent, homosexual,
scatological, or just plain useless.  Since at this point tons of
people will be replying to threads, a killfile becomes even harder to
manage.

So don't look for convoluted technical solutions to Mr. Y's
personality problems.  Just use a little basic common sense.  If you
don't like the way someone behaves on a mailing list, just ignore the
damn person.  Anything else is just going to make matters worse, as
recent history clearly demonstrates.