This point's probably been made already, and it's not very
topical for FAQ-maintainers, but it's important enough that I
think it bears repeating:
Chris's way of looking at things is the *only* way, at least for
his purposes (i.e. determining what he can get away with canceling).
Issuing third-party cancels for "bad" postings is an *extremely*
dangerous weapon, one which many (myself included) would have
once asserted to be unconscionable. The *only* reason that Chris
and the other spam cancelers receive near-unanimous support for
what they do is that their actions are strictly content-neutral
and strictly grounded on the premise of removing traffic which is
mechanically, logistically, operationally damaging to Usenet.
Even with that definition, the support is not quite unanimous,
and if there were even the faintest whiff of favoritism or double
standards for certain kinds of posts, the lunatic fringe which
still whines about third-party cancels would swell to an outraged
lynch mob (and with a certain amount of justification). I think
most people today agree that spam cancellation is a good thing,
and important enough that we can't risk losing the ability to
perform it by losing the popular mandate.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com