Re: Abusive cancels from miakibot (bis)

Dans son message précédent, pehache a écrit :
> Following a previous discussion on that I just want to remind the 
> (approximate) recent history.
>
> A few months ago (in 2021, maybe 2020, I don't remember exactly) Olivier 
> Miakinen (O.M.) wrote a cancel bot named "miakibot" to clean up the fr.* 
> hierarchy from spam etc, as many cancels were done manually before that.
>
> At the begining all was OK, nobody was complaining, and most people were even 
> praising it. There was an old FAQ on fr.* about legit cancels and the bot was 
> essentially cancelling according to this FAQ.
>
> At the same time a usenaut, whose latest incarnation is known as "Néo L'élu", 
> who was posting tons of articles, always with the same kind of subject (about 
> religion, atheism...), with crossposts and no follow-up. The guy was indeed a 
> pain in the ass, but most of time he was not violating any formal rule of 
> fr.* that could justify the cancellation of his posts.
>
> To try limiting the amount of messages from Néo we thought about updating the 
> FAQ to forbid crossposts without fu2 between fr.* and another hierarchy (as a 
> matter of fact Néo was crossposting on francom.*). We took this opportunity 
> to completely rewrite the FAQ, as we felt it was outdated. There are has been 
> a discussion on that last automn on the group fr.usenet.abuse.d, and we 
> reached a consensus on a new FAQ.
>
> However, soon after that O.M. decided to cancel ALL posts from Néo, even the 
> ones that were not violating the rules described in the FAQ. The reason he 
> gave was that Néo was flooding fr.* anyway. This is a kind of indivual UDP, 
> and several people expressed that such an extreme decision should not be 
> taken by a single person, and that a *consensus* should be obtained on 
> fr.usenet.abuse.d.
>
> O.M. then opened a discussion about that, and about some other individual 
> UDPs applied to some other spammers/flooders. He obtained large majorities 
> for almost everything, except for Néo. There was just a small majority (12 
> out of 22) in favour of the UDP on Néo.
>
> One can endlessly argue about "what is a consensus". A common and pragmatic 
> definition is "a large majority". Still one can argue about "how large ?", 
> but what is sure is that a 12 out of 22 is NOT a large majority, and hence is 
> NOT a consensus.
>
> By the meantime the miakibot was still cancelling ALL articles from Néo, and 
> O.M. didn't want to change anything. After a while, however, and because of 
> many protests, he stopped cancelling Néo.
>
> But in march 2022 he resumed cancelling Néo. Just, instead of cancelling all 
> articles, he allowed him to post on a few selected groups (fr.sci.zetetique 
> and the groups related to the Apple Mac), and without any crosspost. All 
> other articles were cancelled. And again it was his own decision, taken 
> without any consensus.
>
> Somehow acknowleging the problem, O.M. used a different "From" for the cancel 
> articles on Néo: "miakibot2 <[email protected]>" instead of "miakibot 
> <[email protected]>".
>
> Soon after he started to cancel the answers to cancelled articles. This would 
> be reasonnable if all the cancels were legit in the first place, which is not 
> the case. Moreover no consensus has been obtained for cancelling the answers 
> to cancelled articles. The "From" for these cancel articles is "miakibot3 
> <[email protected]>"
>
> So at the moment we have :
>
> - miakibot: legit cancel articles, supported by the FAQ on legit cancels or 
> by a consensus
>
> - miakibot2: abusive cancel articles, not supported by the FAQ or by a 
> consensus
>
> - miakibot3: abusive cancel articles, not supported by the FAQ or by a 
> consensus
>
> At least, cancel articles from miakibot2 and miakibot3 should not be honored.
>
> Cancel articles from miakibot are legit at the moment, but one can wonder if 
> O.M. can be trusted on the long term. At first he looks opened to 
> discussions, but he is actually always deciding on his own, without bothering 
> about a consensus, and he is convinced that his point of view is always the 
> right one (if you do not agree with him, then you're just a troll). Also it 
> is worth mentioning a massive abusive cancellation last year, when he 
> *retroactively* cancelled thousands of articles of a single usenaut. Later 
> on, he admitted that he did that because he had been upset by this usenaut. 
> Giving the atomic bomb to someone who is emotionnaly not that stable is maybe 
> not a good idea...
>
> Note: there is currently no more "miakibot2" cancel article, but the reason 
> is just that "Néo" has disappeared from fr.* (his Eternal September account 
> has apparently been suppressed because of violations of conditions of 
> service"). He may come back, or O.M. may decide one day or another to put a 
> UDP on someone else... So blocking miakibot2 (and miakibot3) is still 
> appropriate.
>
> Note 2: all of this also raises some questions about the alphanet.ch server. 
> Not only O.M. uses this server to send the abusive cancel articles, but the 
> Alphanet newsmaster is indeed fully supporting him.

I totally agree with you.

The miakibot must be stopped.
As you have very well reminded, we cannot trust its author.