[Coco] Re: UseNet *"Bit.Listserv.CoCo"* NewsGroup elimination

[John E. Malmberg]

For reference:

http://five.pairlist.net/pipermail/coco/2004-February/004718.html

Since you put some stuff below a signature delimiter, this post may be a 
little out of order, as Mozilla deletes everything below it on the reply.

Please do not put any content below the "dash dash space" of your 
signature.  By convention many mail and news clients know to ignore 
everything beyond that point when composing replies.


Stephen H. Fischer wrote:
> I do not know what is going on with any certainty.  Thus it is impossible to
> determine the best action we should take. The default action of doing
> nothing is continuing.

I do not know if anyone does know.

> I must fault Princeton if what you say is true.

Why?

The issue with the mailing list is Princeton's known public stated 
policy.  If they had their computer security properly configured, they 
would have suspended the coco list as soon as the sponsor left Princeton 
with out designating a successor that was either an employee or student 
of Princeton.

The policy of http://newsadmin.com/bit/bit.html is also stated on their 
web pages.  They create or maintain mirrors of the bit.listserv.* 
mailing lists on request of the mailing lists.

It does not say that under what conditions they will remove them or map 
them to different mailing list(s).

What I am posting is simply what the stated policies are, and what the 
possible implications of them are.

>  If someone at Princeton is aware of what is going on and the condition that
> you state is correct for resuming the listserver for "Bit.Listserv.CoCo"
> they should have said something somewhere that the CoCo Enthusiasts could
> find and read.

They are following their policies.  None of their policies stated 
anything other than that for a mailing list to function, their had to be 
an employee or student of Princeton to sponsor it.

> I accept your statements but can they be tracked back to Princeton?

Yes.  It is on their listserve page, I have lost the URL to it, but the 
one for Buffalo.edu is basically the same.

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/owner/gateway.html

The princeton URL showed up on request from the sending commands to the 
listserv.  I have misplaced it.

But the bottom line is that as soon as the sponser was no longer a 
student or employee of Princeton, their policy was to terminate the 
mailing list.

This was posted several times by various people on the princeton list, 
and that to contact Princton to change anything about the mailing list 
would likely result in the list being shutdown as it now is.

> Too many times persons have been faking in who they are and anyway in any
> case do not have the power to make official statements, give permissions and
> so on.

I have no authority to make any official statements.

> Please give some details of the contact and who you contacted. Name of
> person, Department they work in and their job title.
> 

I do not have permission to release the name at Princeton that I have, 
but it is the same person that apparently any messages to 
abuse(at)princeton.edu get routed to.

As per the topic of the COCO list, the response I have from Princeton is:

: The COCO list actually is one of the very few lists remaining with no
: Princeton person responsible.  The wee folks who have inherited list
: support would dearly love either to have a "local" adopt the list and
: make it fly right, or to have it move elsewhere for hosting--but
: presently, apparently, their charge is to carry on the status quo.

 > What is your impression as to the contact at Princeton having a
 > correct understanding of what has happened with "Bit.Listserv.CoCo".

They only know the policies of the Princeton list server and know 
nothing about the newsgroup that is gated to it.  And they are not 
involved with the operation of the listservers unless there is a policy 
violation.

 > Can they be contacted again!

Yes, but they are probably not that useful for you to contact.  All they 
are authorized to do is state or enforce Princeton's policies.

 > I still want to thank Princeton for hosting the CoCo group for more
 > than 15 years and inquire as to any archives that they might have for
 > the early years of *"Bit.Listserv.CoCo"* .

There should be a list server administrator address, but I do not have 
it.  The default of "POSTMASTER" should eventually get delivere to them.

The person I was in contact with is only in charge of handling abuse 
issues, and not with list managment.  They did not voluteer why the list 
was in a suspended state, and I did not ask, as this was not part of the 
main conversation.

> Nothing at all has been seen and reported from Princeton as to the status of
> the list server mailing list.

> Nothing at all to the group of almost 300 people that are the current
> members of a list that has been in existence for over 15 years.

It might have been nice for an announcement.  But in reality the problem 
really was when the sponsor left Princeton with out a successor.  It 
probably slipped their mind.

> I would expect that any reasonable person would send a message to the
> remaining subscribers on the Princeton as to what is going on just before
> halting the list or place a notice on a web page that can be seen by the
> members.

I have no idea on what triggered their decision.  If I were to look at 
the mailing list traffic for just before they suspended the list, I 
would have to have looked for quite a while before I found any clue that 
there were any real subscribers or posters.

One week spot of the COCO listserv system is that people can put 
mailings on suspension with out actually unsubscribing.  So the number 
of subscribers can be many times higher than the actual participants. 
There may be e-mail addresses on the list that have not been valid for 
years.

> The lack of this and any other traceable announcement from Princeton still
> make me wonder if any one at Princeton is really aware that the list is
> halted.

They are aware.  It was intentional, and it was in accordance with their 
published policies.  What triggered it is still unknown.

> See below for request of names, departments and conversations.

I have only been in contact with the abuse handlers on a different issue.

> My intent is and always has been to tell the truth. The way the truth is
> told may be of little value or great value to help the actions being taken
> be more like what we as a group would like happen.
> 
> I think that the best course of action would be to hand deliver a letter or
> letters to the person in control of UseNet *"Bit.Listserv.CoCo"* NewsGroup.

That would be the folks at: http://newsadmin.com/bit/bit.html.

As near as I can tell, no one wants to be the bad guy.  But there may be 
  automatic processes involved that can kick in with out prior notice.

And nothing of this is different than what I posted back in February.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only