Xref: utzoo news.admin:14576 news.software.b:7886
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!news.cs.indiana.edu!maytag!xenitec!wynnds.xenitec.on.ca!timk
From: timk@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca (Tim Kuehn)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: A way out? re: cnews dumping articles
Message-ID: <1991May22.123413.5485@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca>
Date: 22 May 91 12:34:13 GMT
References: <1991May18.211109.20401@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991May19.035200.879@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca> <1991May21.191941.15498@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: TDK Consulting Services
Lines: 39

In article <1991May21.191941.15498@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1991May19.035200.879@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca> timk@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) writes:
>>How about if a cron script tabulated the type of offenses Cnews found 
>>over a given period of time (say, a week) and posted a tabulation to 
>>control, news.lists, or some other group reporting the which sites are
>>posting broken articles, what they're doing wrong, and how often they're
>>doing it wrong?

>A reasonable idea for a *few* sites to do.  (We did something along those
>lines before the software changes were released, in fact, although we
>did it by mail rather than by news.)  Not so good if it's part of
>the standard configuration, because the last thing we need is a group
>with thousands of largely-redundant articles every week.

Ok then, if you need is a mechanism to keep notifications from being too 
excessive and redundant, limit posts of about sources of offending articles 
to systems that are *immediate neighbors*. For example, if site "x" fed 
site "y" and "y" detected bad articles POSTED from (not passing through) 
"x", it posts a *summary* of the faults found somewhere public, with 
something more detailed logged to an appropriate file. 

Since most sites talk to a resonably small number of other sites, posts 
of possible bad articles would be kept to a manageable number as opposed 
to having all kinds of machines post notes about bad articles being written. 
The remaining problem is keeping the distribution down to a manageable 
area so the whole world doesn't hear that your neighbor is posting bad 
articles.

The obvious problem with this scenario is that sites who aren't neighbors
to a latest-patchlevel-Cnews system wouldn't be informed they're doing a 
news no-no. I have an idea on that, but want to take some more time thinking 
about it. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Tim Kuehn			 TDK Consulting Services  (519)-888-0766
timk@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca  -or-  !{watmath|lsuc}!xenitec!wynnds!timk
Valpo EE turned loose on unsuspecting world! News at 11!
"You take it seriously when someone from a ballistics research lab calls you."
Heard at a Unix user's meeting discussing connectivity issues.