[Coco] Re: A return to bit.listserv.coco?

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

I am sorry if I offend you, but I have seen no signs of life anywhere in the
Bit hierarchy.

Not even from anyone that thinks they are in charge.

Thus I consider the following rules, information and the rest to be
meaningless!

No one, Person, Organization or whatever are interested in B.L.CoCo now.

I tracked down the Organization that took over the "BIT " hierarchy and went
to their office which is 5 miles north of my location. It was strictly a
*sales office*.

They acquired the supposed control of the Bit hierarchy solely for use in
*selling* their companies products.

There may be some interest in the strictly academic segment  but the "BIT"
controlling organization has disappeared.

The rules and other files related to B.L.CoCo still are on a server but it
is not possible to get anyone to even reply.

And it does not matter as no one would accept their correctly formatted
"Orders" because the people that did so in the past have moved on to a real
life.

To say that Princeton is in control is silly. All that they control is their
own servers and as they pay for them, there would be no interest in
restarting a list that was operating on the good will of low order persons
that were not keeping the decision makers correctly informed thus putting
their *own* jobs in jeopardy. Thus the very bad policy of B.L.CoCo to not
rock the boat.

The organization "BIT" is dead. Deal with that fact and move on.

-- 
Stephen H. Fischer



John E. Malmberg wrote:
> Lets clear up some items of confusion.
>
> Currently the newsgroup bit.listserv.coco is under the control of
> Princeton.edu even if they are not actively doing anything with it.
>
> The official charter of the bit.listserv.coco newsgroup is to be a
> newsgroup mirror of the coco mailing list that is currently hosted by
> Princeton.edu.
>
> The bit.listserv.* newsgroups are specifically designated to be gateways
> or mirrors to mailing lists hosted by bitnet members.  Princeton.edu is
> one such member.  http://www.google.com can easily find others.
>
> That mailing list is in a suspended state because Princeton.edu's
> security rules require that it have a sponsor that is a member of their
> faculty or staff.
>
> The coco mailing list was with out a sponsor for several years before
> the spam infected it, and if princeton.edu information security policies
> had been followed, the mailing list would have been shutdown at that time.
>
> It was only until after a large number of users started leaving the coco
> mailing list and newsgroup due to the spam that first Dennis started
> this list, and then Princeton suspended the mailing list.
>
> I do not know why Princeton suddenly took such action, but my guess was
> that since the mailing list robot was sending a confirmation to each
> e-mail address that it received spam or viruses from, someone who's
> address was forged filed an abuse complaint, and when Princeton.edu
> could not locate a sponsor, they suspended the list per their long
> published policy.
>
> Princeton is willing to restart the list if a member of their staff or a
> student is found that will sponsor the list.  A year ago or so, a search
> of google for such lists shows me only one other bit.listserv.* list
> that was still being run by princeton.edu.
>
> If Princeton.edu decides to, as they have the designated ownership of
> the bit.listserv.coco newsgroup, they could easily get it removed.  My
> guess is that since the newsgroup is not using any physical resources
> controlled by Princeton.edu that Princeton will not make any request to
> have the group removed.
>
> The way that the bit.listserv.* newsgroups are chartered is that they
> are specifically to be gated to active mailing lists.
>
> There is a web form on the newsguy.com news server to request such
> associations to be set up.
>
> The preference is for such newsgroups to be gated to mailing lists on
> bitnet members, however there is precedence for them to be gated to
> mailing lists on other servers.
>
> So while there is a possibility that the bit.listserv.coco can disappear
> with out notice, it probably will not happen.
>
> There was also for some reason some belief that people could lobby their
> local news providers not to delete the bit.listserv.coco newsgroup if
> newsguy.com deleted it.  Even if they decided to keep the newsgroup,
> postings would probably not be propagated to other news servers that
> still carried the newsgroup.  Too many holes would appear in the peering
> between news servers.  So that idea never was practical.
>
> A filtered gateway can be installed between the bit.listserv.coco
> newsgroup and this forum with only a little effort.  Message threading
> would likely be lost as more postings would appear in different order
> than they were originally posted.  We see a little of that now, but with
> another newsgroup gateway it would get worse.
>
> I could have a one-way auto-moderated system that copies the
> bit.listserv.coco postings to here running with in a week.  That
> template of that system has been running since just before Dennis
> started his list up.  I stopped work on it when Dennis announce this
> list.  At the time people were also cross posting to the mailing list
> and the bit.listserv.coco, which would have made the gateway more complex.
>
> It is highly likely that a polite letter to both newsguy.com and
> princeton.edu would turn over the bit.listserv.coco to be a mirror of
> Dennis's mailing list under Dennis or someone else's guardianship, where
> newsguy.com would take over being the gateway.
>
> I would recommend if this were done, that the bit.listserv.coco be
> converted to a moderated newsgroup with a robot program that handles
> almost all the moderation as I have seen done on other newsgroups.
>
> If it is not done by someone here, it could be done by someone else, but
> I do not see what value that would be to them.
>
> Also the amount of spam visible on the bit.listserv.coco will vary
> greatly with the news server that you read it on.  http://www.google.com
> tries to remove spam from it's archive, so that can not be relied on.
>
> Of the several news servers that I can use to access the
> bit.listserv.coco, most of the direct newsgroup spam only shows up on
> one of them.  So it looks like the other news servers have depeered with
> the news servers that are allowing spam to be posted.  This is very
> common with news server providers.
>
> This is also basically a rehash of what I have previously posted on this
> topic.
>
> -John
> wb8tyw at qsl.net
> Personal Opinion Only