Netnews and Usenet: Anarchy Through Growth 95Apparently, he attempted to reduce the amount of noise on Lusenet
by implementing a program that would cancel articles crossposted to
alt.cascade. A “cascade” is an affectionate term for a sequence of
messages quoting earlier messages and adding little or no content;
the resulting repeated indent, nugget of idiocy, and terminating
exdent is evidently favored by certain typographically-impaired peo-
ple. Most of us just add the perpetrator ("perp" in the jargon) to our
kill files.
Regrettably, Bandy’s implementation of this (arguably worthy) idea
contained a not-so-subtle bug that caused it to begin cancelling arti-
cles that were not cascades, and it deep-sixed about 400 priceless
gems of net.wisdom before anyone could turn it off.
He admitted his mistake in a message sent to the nntp-managers
mailing list (what remains of the UseNet “cabal”) but calls for him to
“publicly apologize” continue to reverberate. Someone cleverly for-
warded his message from nntp-managers to news.admin (which con-
tained his net address), and someone (doubtless attempting to prevent
possible sendsys bombing of that address) began cancelling all arti-
cles which mentioned the address... Ah, the screams of “Free
speech!” and “Lynch Mobs!” are deafening, the steely clashes of
metaphor upon metaphor are music to the ears of the true connois-
seur of network psychology.
All in all, a classic example of Un*x and UseNet lossage: idiocy
compounded upon idiocy in an ever-expanding spiral. I am sorry to
(publicly) admit that I succumbed to the temptation to throw in my
$.02:
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Splitting BandyHairs
Distribution: worldI’m glad we have nntp-managers for more-or-less reasonable
discussion of the problems of running netnews. But as long as
we’re wasting time and bandywidth here on news.admin:People who have known the perp (God, I hate that word) also
know that he's been ... well, impulsive in the past. And has paid
dearly for his rashness. He's been punished enough. (What, you
mean sitting in a bathtub yelling "Be careful with that X-Acto
blade!" isn’t punishment enough? For anything?) Some say
that sordid episode should remain unchronicled (even by the
ACM -- especially by the ACM) ...