OO+ -iB +.+<~t<-<Ru◄=♠↑
most crossposted crud I can think of. STOP IT.
Moreover, it s a waste of time for you, because if I don't approve
the post, or any of the other moderators, it won't appear in any of the other
groups you've crossposted to either. And we're not going to strip the c.b.c
group and and repost it for you. It's not our job.
The problem is now of such an extent that c.b.c no longer accepts
crossposts, even if they *are* on-topic. Sorry. See section 2.1.1.
* Mass post or autopost. In the past six months or so I have had two
incidences of nearly several hundred megabytes of warez end up in my mailbox
with more on the way, to the point where I had to complain to the offender's ISP
to get them to stop before my server's mail spool got overrun.
Not only is this unspeakably rude and impossible to process in a
timely fashion, but it also can cause denial of service problems for moderators'
ISPs and systems. Do NOT load your programs into an autoposter
and let your program blast us on autopilot. Do NOT pack everything into a
gigantic archive and bolus us at 5 gigs a post. If we can't contact you to
turn it off, we *will* make sure you're disconnected one way or another.
Please don't forget there's a human being looking at every post you send,
and that not everyone's hard disk is as big as yours.
* Use a hopelessly munged address. We're a fairly astute bunch of
guys, and most mail munges are creative enough to be bot-foolers but still
humanly decipherable, and we have no problem with munging per se. (Heck, I
used to regularly munge mine.) However, we have received submissions from "G@RT"
(actual from address) that we needed more information on. Guess what, bucko?
Into the bit bucket. If we can't contact you about your post, we will reject it.
* Bite your nails. Don't do it, it's a nasty habit and you look funny
gnawing on them like that.
2. Talking to c.b.c
2.1 How to post
2.1.1 The anti-spam bot
In days gone by, the c.b.c moderator job had become increasingly difficult
because of large amounts of spam to both the group and to the submission
addresses, as well as large and frequently lengthy and repeated crossposts
to groups where things should not be crossposted. This has meant many mod
mailbox overflows and many ruined keyboards bouncing on whatever delete
key is defined.
Seriously, it really has been a problem, and only because of the magnitude
have more drastic options been applied.
On August 1, 2005, this policy went into effect (which is also given in the
mini-FAQ). To successfully submit a formal submission or a question through
the request address, your post or E-mail:
- MUST HAVE: either the words 'commodore' or 'comp.binaries.cbm',
spelled correctly, in upper/lower case, in either your MESSAGE BODY,
MESSAGE SUBJECT, or both. No other headers will qualify. Odds are
your message contains these key terms already! If it doesn't, it
will be silently DELETED.
** Simply having comp.binaries.cbm in the Newsgroups: header is not enough! **
- MUST -NOT- HAVE: newsgroups *other* than comp.binaries.cbm in the
Newsgroups: header, if one exists. If you crosspost, it will be
silently DELETED. (If you do not have a Newsgroups: header, then
the first rule applies.)
I'm sorry about the onerousness of the requirements, but they are a needed
measure to keep c.b.c running smoothly, and most legitimate submissions
should not be affected by this policy. Please note that messages that are
trapped by the anti-spam filter do not reach the moderator, so we will not
see them if your post fails any of these conditions.
2.1.2 How to post by newsreader (MOST preferred)
Simply point your newsreader to comp.binaries.cbm and post your document.
You should refer to your newsreader for the appropriate documentation. Make sure
it is uuencoded -- raw binaries never make it, and yEnc or MIME may be eaten by
our pre-processing bots.
What will happen is that your post will be sent by UUnet to the moderators,
who will then review it. This method is most preferred because mailreaders screw
around with mail they send, particularly MIME-enabled mailers. Most newsreaders
don't. See above for the rest of the process.
Please remember that your posts are pre-filtered! Read section 2.1.1.
2.1.3 How to post by mail
While we don't really encourage this, people do have trouble posting through
Usenet, especially if your only access is through Google Groups or the like.
If you really can't post by news, send your document to:
comp-binaries-cbm(at)floodgap.com
which is a mail alias maintained by Cameron Kaiser. If you use a
MIME-enabled mailer, DO NOT UUENCODE IT BECAUSE THE MAILER EATS IT! In this
case, and this case only, SEND IT AS AN ATTACHMENT. If the mailer is not
MIME-enabled, like mailx or many Elm versions, send uuencoded files as
usual.
| Even if you subscribe to Spiro's mailing list (1.1.4), you can't submit
| through it as posts do not enter the c.b.c moderation stream (and the
| list is configured to block posts except from administrators anyway). Use
| the submission address above instead.
As a point of clarity, if you intend to send your program as an attachment,
do NOT uuencode the program and send the *uucode* as the attachment. SEND
THE BINARY ITSELF! Also, try to give the attachment a semi-descriptive name.
We often strip out attachments in one big bunch, and a whole lot of similar
looking files makes it tough to match files with posts.
CompuServe seems to be problematic with uuencoded attachments. If you can
use 'NewMail', please do so. If you can't, please alert the moderators in
the message body that you're using CompuServe OldMail and we will try to
rescue the post. (Thanks to John Iannetta.)
Please remember that your posts are pre-filtered! Read section 2.1.1.
2.2 Contacts
As mentioned, it is better to mail the moderators collectively. Posting
will have the same effect as mailing, but it's better to mail because we
can differentiate between the two.
The alias
cbc-request+at+floodgap.com
will send to all members of the moderation team, including me.
If you wish to contact me personally regarding the FAQ or the large check you'll
send me or the attractive, unmarried sister you have, send mail to
ckaiser{at}floodgap.com
and I promise to ignore it for as long as I can, unless I really like your
sister or the check is good.
John Iannetta has promised me an attractive sister, but I think someone at
| Federal Express routed the crate to the Sultan of Brunei. Spiro Trikaliotis
| has not sent me one yet.
2.3 Troubleshooting
2.3.1 'My post was approved, but it hasn't appeared yet'
If you know that we approved your post, there are several reasons why it
hasn't appeared yet. The only reason under our control is that we simply haven't
injected it into the Usenet stream yet.
Normally, we post things as soon as we approve them, just to get them out of our
hair, so most of the time these reasons below apply. In such cases,
there's no one you can blame, unless you have contacts at WorldCom. Usenet
is a very haphazard mishmash, so patience is a true virtue. Consider:
* Your ISP's newsfeed is behind. If your ISP does not have a 24/7 NNTP
connection, it could take up to a few days for it to percolate your way.
* Bad Usenet routing. Some computer between us and you burped or did a nasty
thing. Either way, the post is the immediate victim. Have patience -- it
should start propagating with the computer's imminent resurrection.
* Our ISP stream is queuing up. I use Newscene, which is a pretty reliable
Usenet injection point. Some moderators might use smaller ISPs that don't
have a 24/7 NNTP feed, and so the actual injection step might be delayed.
2.3.1.1 'I post over and over, but you say my post never gets to you'
If you are crossposting your message, it will be deleted by our
pre-processor bot long before it ever gets to us. Furthermore, if you do
not include certain keywords in your messagebody or subject, the bot will
also eat them. Read section 2.1.1. It's not very hard, and a single tweak
will fix it. Sorry. Blame the spammers and bot posters for that.
If you've already done that and it still won't work, another issue is that
certain news sites with semi-morons for news administrators do not properly mark
comp.binaries.cbm as a moderated newsgroup. When your news server is not aware
that c.b.c is moderated, it will post the message as if it were an unmoderated
group, and pass it to another server. When it gets to a server
that knows c.b.c is moderated and this server sees that your message doesn't
have the proper credentials, it will silently drop it. End result: the
moderators don't get your post, and your post goes to the great bitbucket in the
sky.
There are two (well, two and a half) ways to fix this:
* Mail your post all the time. Easier, but gets annoying.
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
|
