INN - robots
< INN - cancel-lock/cancel-key | Configure the INN nntp server (2021/2022)
Definition
In the Usenet context, much larger than that of INN, a "robot" is a program, often written by a simple user (as opposed to server admin), that writes articles on some group to get some automatized result.
The simple ones may be the ones that provides the group chart each month. But the most commonly discussed are cancel or nocem robots, ones that sent nocem or cancel messages.
Oldest I know is "bleachbot". French ones most discussed is "miakibot", names after it's writer's name, Olivier Miakinen.
See them at work
Cancel robots
Cancel robots are most of the time visible on the control.cancel group. For example, when I write this I just read a cancel message "generated by aioe.org". I don't really know if it's sent by a robot, as there is no such claim in the message, but the goal is pretty simple, so it's very unlikely that aioe admin do this by hand.
The message have the "cyberspam" tag that announces it's goal, and it's message part says it's to remove "an italian troll". More infos in the message source.
You can see frequently cancel messages sent by "Colonial2022". I doubt it to be a robot, may be manual. Also against spam.
You can also see (again today for me) a miakibot message "SPAM (bysubject)", that means what the robot is meant to do.
Of course you can also see in this group messages cancelled by the sender itself.
nocem robots
nocem messages (see the explanation elsewhere on this wiki) are often server related. So published on "nocem" local server groups.
It's the case for dodin.nocem. Local dodin.nocem nocems are presently published by "llpminibot" with comment "But de ce message NoCem: garder les groupes de discussions francophone propre de tout spam ou abus" ("keep french speaking groups from spam").
The author of llpminibot is not me, but I know the author, an he accepted to give on his web site a pretty complete description of the way his nocem work and this is given in any message here.
I also accept nocem published in fr.usenet.abus.nocem by "nono" that say : "Ceci est une notice basée sur spamassassin.". This robot uses spamassassin. It have right now three variations: spam, spam2 and spam3 (and now spam4). Each variation uses a different score. Higher is the score higher is the risk of false positive, that is messages cancelled that shouldn't have been. I accept only spam and spam1, with very few false positive. Explanations here (in french).
and aioe nocems in "aioe.news.nocem". these messages say: "Aioe.org issues cancel messages in the NoCem format against USENET articles that include spam or other abuses posted on Italian groups or on the aioe.* hierarchy".
You may understand than at start aioe is an italian server like I am a french server.
You see also than aioe publishes itself the nocems.
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