Tim Skirvin kirjutas Neljapäev, 1. oktoober 2020 kl 03:04:07 UTC+3:
> Archive-name: usenet/free/charter
> Posting-frequency: twice monthly
> Last-modified: 2001/07/11
> Version: 2.0.1
> URL: http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/free/
>
> "Everything is permitted. Nothing is forbidden."
> The Free FAQ
> by Tim Skirvin
>
> This document is an introduction to free.* and the issues surrounding it.
> It assumes that you have at least some basic knowledge of Usenet history
> and administration; if you don't, well, either go get them and come back,
> or accept that there's going to be some parts of this FAQ that you don't
> understand. All standard disclaimers apply, void where prohibited, you
> may cancel at any time for a full refund, trust no one, <FISH><, fnord.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Table of Contents * = new material
>
> I. General Questions
> 1. What is free.*?
> 2. Why was it made?
> 3. How can I get access to free.*? *
> 4. What groups are available?
> II. Policy Questions
> 1. So, free.* has no rules then?
> 2. What about [fill-in-the-blank] cancels?
> 3. Won't the groups become massively abuse-ridden?
> 4. How are the rules enforced?
> 5. What about "(Free == absolutely NO rules)"?
> III. User Questions
> 1. Why would I want to read free.*?
> 2. Can I post [fill-in-the-blank] here?
> 3. Can I make my own group?
> IV. Other Questions
> 1. Can I issue cancels for articles cross-posted out of free.*?
> 2. Can I make my own hierarchy?
> 3. Why did you negotiate with terrorists?
> V. Other documents
> 1. The free.* charter
> 2. The Freedom Knights
> 3. Other hierarchies
> VI. Three Years Later - A Retrospective *
> 1. How well has free.* worked? *
> 2. Would you do it again? *
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I. General Questions
> 1. What is free.*?
>
> free.* is a Usenet hierarchy where the only rule is "do whatever
> you want as long as you're not destroying somebody else's words". If you
> know Usenet already, you can think of it as a more chaotic alt.*; if you
> don't, know Usenet, the closest analogy is probably to a true anarchy.
>
> 2. Why was it made?
>
> By the time free.* was created on July 18, 1998, the idea of free.*
> had been kicked around for years - in fact, the idea had already been tried
> once in 1994, though it met with limited success. The idea of a hierarchy
> was appealing to many, from users that wanted a place where they wouldn't
> be watched over to administrators that wanted to experiment with a true
> anarchy; many others were disgusted by the idea, fearing that it would be
> a barren wasteland filled with spam populated only with kooks and morons.
> Nobody had any idea who was right, and it was left at that.
>
> The initial catalyst for the creation of free.* was a continuing
> cancelwar in news.*, reportedly over the rights of users to control their
> own posts. Annoyed by the cancels and reposts, Tim Skirvin, a fairly
> prominent poster to news.admin.*, decided to see what he could do about
> the problem, so he entered into mock negotiations with the rogue canceller.
> After several aborted attempts to figure out what the canceller wanted,
> Tim remembered the idea of free.* and mentioned it off-handedly; he was
> genuinely surprised to find that the canceller was actually interested in
> the proposal. Confident that the hierarchy was a good idea whose time had
> come, and not caring that he would probably be reviled for years to come
> over his apparent negotiation, he posted a charter, sent out a few newgroups,
> and declared the hierarchy open for business.
>
> 3. How can I get access to free.*?
>
> Not too many educational or corporate news servers carry the
> hierarchy; if you want to read it, you'll probably have to find yourself a
> commercial provider. Google Groups (http://groups.google.com - formerly
> DejaNews), a free Usenet service, carries the hierarchy; most of the
> other large news resellers carry at least some portion of it, and are
> generally open to add more. Your best bet is probably to use one of them.
>
> You could, of course, ask your news administrators to pick up the
> hierarchy, which shouldn't be very challenging. If sufficient interest is
> there, most admins will pick it up, and interest is often determined by
> user requests.
>
> 4. What groups are available?
>
> Because this is a FAQ that doesn't want to be updated every couple
> of days, it's not going to list off the newsgroups in free.* here. Instead,
> check out ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/free, part of the ISC's
> canonical newgroup/rmgroup archive.
>
>
> II. Policy Questions
> 1. So, free.* has no rules then?
>
> In essence, yes. More specifically, there is one rule: anybody
> can do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't destroy somebody else's
> words. What this means in practice:
>
> o No cancel messages or any derivitives thereof are allowed within
> free.*. If any are issued, they should not be honored.
> o rmgroups should not be issued for any group in the free.* hierarchy.
> o Servers should not filter their free.* feeds.
>
> Other than that, everything is allowed by the hierarchy.
>
> 2. What about [fill-in-the-blank] cancels.
>
> Spam cancels, binary cancels, spew cancels, forgery cancels,
> persoanl cancels, and in fact every form of cancel are right out. Any
> filtering that needs to be done should be done on the poster- or user-side
> only.
>
> 3. Won't the groups become massively abuse-ridden?
>
> Probably. Then again, this might not be that much of a change -
> much of alt.* is already effectively flooded, thanks to the tenacity of
> the spammers, and even alt.sex.* survives in some fashion or another. In
> addition, the prohibitions on filtering do not extend to complaints about
> abusive users; service providers are still free to cancel accounts for
> usage violations as they see fit. And, of course, it's possible that the
> spammers will recognize a good thing when they see it and let the
> hierarchy survive.
>
> free.* will probably have more spam than most hierarchies; few
> people doubt that. What's in question is whether or not it will be able
> to survive it - and, given a little ingenuity and hard work, there's few
> reasons it wouldn't be able to.
>
> 4. How are the rules enforced?
>
> Well, in essence, they aren't. Sure, it might be possible to
> track down everybody that issues cancels within the hierarchy and beat them
> upside the head with a clue stick, but that's hard to do when there's
> nobody really in charge; all that's really possible is to encourage people
> to pay attention to the hierarchy's rules or drop the hierarchy entirely.
> Administrators that carry the hierarchy are also encouraged to update
> their software to ignore cancels and rmgroups within the hierarchy, which
> solves the problem permanently within that server.
>
> As for the rules regarding filtering, well, it's not really much
> of a rule anyway, and it's ignored to one extent or another by just about
> every server out there. It's more useful as a statement of principles
> than a rule...
>
> 5. What about "(Free == absolutely NO rules)"?
>
> *sigh* Alright, a history lesson: free.* was originally created
> in late 1994 by John Palmer, during a flamewar over alt.* creation policies.
> It enjoyed a brief period of semi-popularity, before fading into almost
> complete obscurity for several years. While several people continued to
> use the hierarchy during this time, few noticed their crossposts; free.*
> may as well have not existed.
>
> That didn't stop the old residents from piping up and complaining
> when the hierarchy was made.
>
> The original charter for free.* was "(Free == absolutely NO rules)".
> This is, of course, not entirely compatible with the current charter; still,
> to most it's close enough to make no difference. While there is a slight
> rift over the matter between the old and new hierarchy residents, it's
> probably more practical to follow the new rules than the old.
>
>
> III. User Questions
> 1. Why would I want to read free.*?
>
> In most cases, you probably don't - there isn't a whole lot of
> content there, and it's a lot harder to sift the wheat from the chaff in
> an unfiltered hierarchy. Still, it's got its advantages - your posts will
> go out exactly as you made them, you can talk about things just about
> anywhere you want to, you probably won't be made fun of for being silly,
> and you can just generally do what you want.
>
> If any of that stuff sounds appealing to you, then I guess this
> hierarchy's for you. If not, then I highly recommend you ignore it.
>
> 2. Can I post [fill-in-the-blank] here?
>
> It depends on what you're talking about and what your ISP's
> policies are. You can get away with posting spam, binaries, and whatever
> else to free.* without the threat of any administrative retaliation; you
> may get bitched at by your service provider, though, and there's not too
> much that anybody else can do about it. Flames, off-topic posts, cascades,
> and everything else is probably going to be just ignored. Nobody's going
> to yell at you for forging the approval to a moderated newsgroup, except
> maybe one of the other users. Pretty much, you can do whatever you want,
> as long as your admins know what's up and are okay with it.
>
> That doesn't mean you *should* do any of this, of course. But at
> least it's an option.
>
> 3. Can I make my own group?
>
> Certainly. Just post a message that looks something like this
> (headers and all):
>
> Newsgroups: free.control,free.fishhead
> Subject: cmsg newgroup free.fishhead
> Approved: mu...@fishhead.fish
> Control: newgroup free.fishhead
> From: ro...@poly.com (Fish Head)
>
> For your newsgroups file:
> free.fishhead Eat them up, yum!
>
> There's no guarantee that anybody will carry your group, of course,
> but at least you tried. Better names will probably ensure that more servers
> will carry your group, so you might want to put some thought into it.
>
>
> IV. Other Questions
> 1. Can I issue cancels for articles cross-posted out of free.*?
>
> Sure. The most restictive ruleset of any newsgroup present in a
> cross-posted article applies; considering that every other hierarchy has a
> more restrictive ruleset than free.*, there's not much that our policies
> are going to affect.
>
> This does mean, of course, that crossposting into free.* is not a
> way around standard Usenet policies. If you want your articles to remain
> safe, I wouldn't recommend crossposting them out of free.*. Period.
>
> 2. Can I make my own hierarchy?
>
> Sure. It'd probably be a good idea if you kept it within free.*
> if you want the same policies (or lack thereof) to apply to it; however,
> there's really not much anybody can do to stop you from making whatever
> top-level hierarchies you want.
>
> 3. Why did you negotiate with terrorists?
>
> Oh, for Gods' sakes...look, people, free.* was created because it
> was a good idea, not to be anybody's personal playground. Any reports you
> may hear about me doing it for any specific individual are a) exaggerated
> b) silly, and c) a damned fine disinformation job on my part.
>
> Furrfu.
>
>
> V. Other Documents
> 1. The free.* charter
>
> From the original hierarchy announcement:
>
> free.* is a hierarchy where anything is allowed, and nothing is
> forbidden. Period. There will be no cancels here, no rmgroups, no
> supersedes, and no central control. If somebody wants a group, they can
> create it. If somebody wants to post something, they can post it. If
> somebody wants to forge something, they can forge it. If somebody wants
> to do something, they can do it - as long as it doesn't involve the
> destruction of somebody else's words.
>
> There will be no spam cancels in free.*, no binary cancels, no
> forgery cancels, no spew cancels, no cancels period. Administrators are
> encourged to not filter the newsgroups in any way, including server-based
> filters and NoCeM. Administrators are also encourged to not honor cancel
> messages crossposted to the hierarchy.
>
> These rules will be enforced by anybody that cares to enforce
> them. Considering the type of rules, this enforcement will most likely
> take the form of educating people on just what free.* is about.
>
> Above all, free.* is about free speech without authority. Enjoy
> it or ignore it. It's your choice.
>
> 2. The Freedom Knights
>
> Many of the ideas for free.* came from years of discussions on the
> Freedom Knights mailing list. The Freedom Knights are a group dedicated
> to free speech on Usenet; so far as I know, free.* is exactly what they want
> Usenet to be like. As such, you might want to check out their webpages,
> at <URL:http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/>. Enjoy.
>
> 3. Other hierarchies
>
> free.* is not the only new Usenet hierarchy to pop up over the
> last couple of years.
>
> o mod.* (<URL:http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/obsolete/mod>)
> A hierarchy for only moderated newsgroups; it's a kindof of flip-side
> to free.*. Not yet started, but it probably will be fairly soon.
>
> o net.* (<URL:http://www.usenet2.org/>)
> A hierarchy that tries to work through the application of rules,
> rather than a lack of them. It currently exists, is fairly popular,
> and is pretty much the domain of news administrators.
>
>
> VI. Three Years Later - A Retrospective
>
> (You may have noticed that most of the above FAQ was written back
> in July 1998, shortly after the creation of free.*. It is now three years
> later, just a week until the third anniversary of my brainstorm/brainfart,
> depending on who you ask, and a bit of perspective is necessary...)
>
> 1. How well has free.* worked?
>
> About as well as could be expected. A lot of groups have been
> created (2322, by my count, as of Wed Jul 11 09:36:05 CDT 2001), and not
> all (or even most) of them are joke groups. Are they filled with spam?
> You bet. But a lot of them are also used, if intermittently, and that's
> really enough of an excuse (in my mind) for the cost in disk space and
> processor time.
>
> If one thing of interest has come out of free.*, it's the regional
> sub-hierarchies. There are two truly substantial sub-hierarchies of note
> - free.it.* (Italian) and free.uk.* (United Kingdom) - but other, smaller
> sub-hierarchies also thrive (free.pl.*, free.nl.*, free.fr.*, etc). These
> groups have served the same purpose as alt.* does for the Big-8 (rec.*,
> sci.*, etc) - offering an alternative group creation process - for regional
> hierarchies.
>
> 2. Would you do it again?
>
> Yes, though I doubt I'd go about it the same way - the impression
> that free.* was an appeasement for net abusers still holds strong, becuase
> not enough effort was spent avoiding that stigma early in the hierarchy's
> creation. It would probably also have been useful to work with some others
> to create some advisory namespace guidelines; steering people towards four
> or five different solutions would have also been an interesting experiment.
>
> But overall, I'm reasonably satisfied with free.*. It hasn't
> exactly changed the world, but I didn't want it to.
>
> --
> Copyright 2001 by Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org>