The Hungarian Conspiracy
2009-09-03 21:44:09 UTC
Is it my imagination, or has AIOE recently gotten a lot worse for
randomly rejecting articles with cryptic error messages?
It used to reject:
1. Duplicate articles.
2. Articles with too many crossposted newsgroups (> 5).
3. Articles with more than two newsgroups and no followup-to.
4. Articles with excessive quoting.
5. Articles with long lines.
That isn't too bothersome, except the last item, which causes problems
with posting long URLs (which won't post if not broken up, but won't
work if broken up, either with a click or copy/paste) and sometimes
smacks someone who merely had the temerity to QUOTE an article with long
lines (without adding any of their own!).
It also used to have a 25 posts per user per day limit, which was
somewhat onerous but not enormously so.
In the last few days it's much worse. I've seen all of these when
posting followups to some political articles:
441 Multipost.
Usually after a failed attempt when I correct something and resend. It
seems to sometimes incorrectly class a failed attempt as successful, and
thus consider the subsequent attempt to be a duplicate article when it
really isn't.
441 Your userid has sent too many articles.
After successfully posting as few as zero(!) articles in one day from
one IP address, and making as few as three attempts in one day (counting
the one that generates the above bogus error message). More commonly,
only after four or five successful posts. Occasionally I get to make
*ten* posts in a single day. Wow, *ten*!
The limit was obviously lowered from 25 to rand_int(10) or some such
idiocy.
441 Nonexistent group.
OK, but can it not either:
1. Accept the post if at least *some* group in the Newsgroups: line is
carried, perhaps with the missing groups elided from that header? or
2. At least tell me WHICH group. In the latest instance it was
alt.republican, but I had to check the other four groups against the
server's active list to determine this fact. (It happened to be the
final group in the list, so the worst case happened, checking four
other groups and finding that they ARE on the list, thus determining
which group is the problem group by process of elimination.)
441 Body contains banned domain: URIBL.com
This is doubly ridiculous, and possibly triply so:
1. The body of the particular post at issue did not contain any mention
of "URIBL.com" at all, and I checked it twice. When I reposted it
after ROT13ing every single URL and email address it posted, so it
apparently objected to *some* domain nam in the body but the message
was in error as to which domain.
2. It's ludicrous to block posts based on any property of the *body*,
save perhaps excessive quoting. This treads very close to infringing
freedom of speech. If someone wants to discuss one of the domains
being "banned" they can't. That goes against the spirit of Usenet in
a very major way.
3. If this post succeeds, then the domain identified by the error
message is, itself, NOT banned, just to add to the silliness, meaning
the error message was caused by Y.com, erroneously said that it was
caused by X.com, and to top it off, X.com itself DOESN'T cause it.
(Perhaps even more amusing will be if this fails, but the error
message now identifies the domain that it didn't like from the OTHER
message. But if you're reading this at all, it succeeded; if it fails
I'll rewrite this entire section to work around the problem.)
Regardless of what is done about the rest of this, I must insist that
blocking posts based on the occurrence of words, phrases, names, or
similarly in the body cannot continue. If this is not corrected AND
apologized for, publicly, in this newsgroup I will discontinue using
AIOE and sign up at eternal-september or albasani.
441 Too many hierarchies.
???
This seems to be triggered by crossposts, because trimming groups fixes
it. But it occurs with five and sometimes even fewer newsgroups, not
solely six or more. This is another one that's quite problematic.
AIOE is getting as ridiculous for nannying rules and random, undisclosed
blocks and limitations as that troll Greg Hall complains about. Until
the last few days I didn't take any of his numerous rants seriously,
noting that AIOE was a little bit anal but work-with-able. With the
recent changes, it is no longer work-with-able in my opinion. In
particular, with one fairly long post it took me longer to send the
bloody thing than to write it. It was a perfectly legitimate post, and
well within what "old AIOE" would have accepted as regards crossposts,
followup-to, and suchlike, but it took me ages to get it to send. Over
an hour I'd estimate, with nearly all of the above messages being seen
at one time or another. One should not have to jump through hoops to
post something! Well, except maybe if you're trying to spam. I wasn't; I
was debunking a misogynist who had posted a bunch of nonsense to several
politics and women's newsgroups, which I'd argue is a public service.
Particularly annoying is that I kept having to change my IP address. I
kept getting "your userid has posted too many articles", even though
this was my SECOND POST OF THE DAY I was trying to post. I'd made one
short post successfully a few minutes earlier. Then this one kept giving
AIOE fits for no really good reason, and every third attempt or so I'd
get the "too many articles" BS. It looks like the limit-for-the-day came
up from the PRNG as 2. The basic pattern went like this: attempt the
post (441 too many articles), disconnect and reconnect, attempt the post
(quietly fails without explanation at all, or else timeout error),
attempt the post (441 some random BS such as "banned domain"), change
something, attempt the post (441 too many articles), wash, rinse,
repeat.
I consider my changing my IP to work around the ridiculous behavior
noted above as legitimate, because THIS post here will be only my FOURTH
actual post of the day once I get IT to succeed (fingers crossed now).
Far less than the "old" limit of 25. I don't consider it unethical to
work around what seems clearly to be broken behavior while remaining so
far within the limit officially set (but buggily enforced by software).
After today, I suspect I shall not be using AIOE any more, unless I hear
confirmation here that the above issues have been fixed and people can
once again use AIOE to reply to stuff without all kinds of jumping
through hoops (a followup-to: and maybe some newsgroups trimmed and away
they go).
In particular, I *request*:
1. That the "441 No such group" message specify the newsgroup(s) at
issue.
2. That "441 Too many hierarchies" go away entirely.
3. That "441 Multipost." correctly only consider successful posts as
potential duplicates of the submission. An unsuccessful one with
an identical body is either going to fail anyway (if the body was
the issue, e.g. too much quoted text), or, if it succeeds (because
it was a header change that fixed it), is not actually a multi-post
because it is the first post with that body to actually appear
online.
Furthermore, I *require* (on pain of not using AIOE until these are
fixed, and acknowledged to be fixed):
1. That "441 Your userid has posted too many articles" only ever appears
if *at least* 25 successful posts were submitted by that "userid" in
the preceding 24 hours, or else during the current calendar day, one
or the other. I.e. that the limit be returned to its original value,
if not made an even higher one, and that it return to being, and
henceforth remain, deterministic and predictable.
2. There are no restrictions on body content, except possibly percentage
of quoted material.
randomly rejecting articles with cryptic error messages?
It used to reject:
1. Duplicate articles.
2. Articles with too many crossposted newsgroups (> 5).
3. Articles with more than two newsgroups and no followup-to.
4. Articles with excessive quoting.
5. Articles with long lines.
That isn't too bothersome, except the last item, which causes problems
with posting long URLs (which won't post if not broken up, but won't
work if broken up, either with a click or copy/paste) and sometimes
smacks someone who merely had the temerity to QUOTE an article with long
lines (without adding any of their own!).
It also used to have a 25 posts per user per day limit, which was
somewhat onerous but not enormously so.
In the last few days it's much worse. I've seen all of these when
posting followups to some political articles:
441 Multipost.
Usually after a failed attempt when I correct something and resend. It
seems to sometimes incorrectly class a failed attempt as successful, and
thus consider the subsequent attempt to be a duplicate article when it
really isn't.
441 Your userid has sent too many articles.
After successfully posting as few as zero(!) articles in one day from
one IP address, and making as few as three attempts in one day (counting
the one that generates the above bogus error message). More commonly,
only after four or five successful posts. Occasionally I get to make
*ten* posts in a single day. Wow, *ten*!
The limit was obviously lowered from 25 to rand_int(10) or some such
idiocy.
441 Nonexistent group.
OK, but can it not either:
1. Accept the post if at least *some* group in the Newsgroups: line is
carried, perhaps with the missing groups elided from that header? or
2. At least tell me WHICH group. In the latest instance it was
alt.republican, but I had to check the other four groups against the
server's active list to determine this fact. (It happened to be the
final group in the list, so the worst case happened, checking four
other groups and finding that they ARE on the list, thus determining
which group is the problem group by process of elimination.)
441 Body contains banned domain: URIBL.com
This is doubly ridiculous, and possibly triply so:
1. The body of the particular post at issue did not contain any mention
of "URIBL.com" at all, and I checked it twice. When I reposted it
after ROT13ing every single URL and email address it posted, so it
apparently objected to *some* domain nam in the body but the message
was in error as to which domain.
2. It's ludicrous to block posts based on any property of the *body*,
save perhaps excessive quoting. This treads very close to infringing
freedom of speech. If someone wants to discuss one of the domains
being "banned" they can't. That goes against the spirit of Usenet in
a very major way.
3. If this post succeeds, then the domain identified by the error
message is, itself, NOT banned, just to add to the silliness, meaning
the error message was caused by Y.com, erroneously said that it was
caused by X.com, and to top it off, X.com itself DOESN'T cause it.
(Perhaps even more amusing will be if this fails, but the error
message now identifies the domain that it didn't like from the OTHER
message. But if you're reading this at all, it succeeded; if it fails
I'll rewrite this entire section to work around the problem.)
Regardless of what is done about the rest of this, I must insist that
blocking posts based on the occurrence of words, phrases, names, or
similarly in the body cannot continue. If this is not corrected AND
apologized for, publicly, in this newsgroup I will discontinue using
AIOE and sign up at eternal-september or albasani.
441 Too many hierarchies.
???
This seems to be triggered by crossposts, because trimming groups fixes
it. But it occurs with five and sometimes even fewer newsgroups, not
solely six or more. This is another one that's quite problematic.
AIOE is getting as ridiculous for nannying rules and random, undisclosed
blocks and limitations as that troll Greg Hall complains about. Until
the last few days I didn't take any of his numerous rants seriously,
noting that AIOE was a little bit anal but work-with-able. With the
recent changes, it is no longer work-with-able in my opinion. In
particular, with one fairly long post it took me longer to send the
bloody thing than to write it. It was a perfectly legitimate post, and
well within what "old AIOE" would have accepted as regards crossposts,
followup-to, and suchlike, but it took me ages to get it to send. Over
an hour I'd estimate, with nearly all of the above messages being seen
at one time or another. One should not have to jump through hoops to
post something! Well, except maybe if you're trying to spam. I wasn't; I
was debunking a misogynist who had posted a bunch of nonsense to several
politics and women's newsgroups, which I'd argue is a public service.
Particularly annoying is that I kept having to change my IP address. I
kept getting "your userid has posted too many articles", even though
this was my SECOND POST OF THE DAY I was trying to post. I'd made one
short post successfully a few minutes earlier. Then this one kept giving
AIOE fits for no really good reason, and every third attempt or so I'd
get the "too many articles" BS. It looks like the limit-for-the-day came
up from the PRNG as 2. The basic pattern went like this: attempt the
post (441 too many articles), disconnect and reconnect, attempt the post
(quietly fails without explanation at all, or else timeout error),
attempt the post (441 some random BS such as "banned domain"), change
something, attempt the post (441 too many articles), wash, rinse,
repeat.
I consider my changing my IP to work around the ridiculous behavior
noted above as legitimate, because THIS post here will be only my FOURTH
actual post of the day once I get IT to succeed (fingers crossed now).
Far less than the "old" limit of 25. I don't consider it unethical to
work around what seems clearly to be broken behavior while remaining so
far within the limit officially set (but buggily enforced by software).
After today, I suspect I shall not be using AIOE any more, unless I hear
confirmation here that the above issues have been fixed and people can
once again use AIOE to reply to stuff without all kinds of jumping
through hoops (a followup-to: and maybe some newsgroups trimmed and away
they go).
In particular, I *request*:
1. That the "441 No such group" message specify the newsgroup(s) at
issue.
2. That "441 Too many hierarchies" go away entirely.
3. That "441 Multipost." correctly only consider successful posts as
potential duplicates of the submission. An unsuccessful one with
an identical body is either going to fail anyway (if the body was
the issue, e.g. too much quoted text), or, if it succeeds (because
it was a header change that fixed it), is not actually a multi-post
because it is the first post with that body to actually appear
online.
Furthermore, I *require* (on pain of not using AIOE until these are
fixed, and acknowledged to be fixed):
1. That "441 Your userid has posted too many articles" only ever appears
if *at least* 25 successful posts were submitted by that "userid" in
the preceding 24 hours, or else during the current calendar day, one
or the other. I.e. that the limit be returned to its original value,
if not made an even higher one, and that it return to being, and
henceforth remain, deterministic and predictable.
2. There are no restrictions on body content, except possibly percentage
of quoted material.
--
Scheming to take over the world since 1979.
Scheming to take over the world since 1979.