pst@anise.acc.com (Paul Traina) (08/09/89)
The following is a rewrite of my earlier script that creates forged cancel
messages. It's signifcantly more "USENET politically correct."
Usage:
pipe a message into it, it will send mail back to the author
of the message asking him/her to cancel their message.
it then goes on to explain that alt.sources
is for sources and suggests that they consider using alt.sources.d
or some other more appropriate newsgroup.
it doesn't cancel their message :-( [I censored the message censor]
-- cut here --
: /bin/sh
#
# The following shell script helps police alt.sources.
# It is much less obnoxious than the script I wrote to create
# forged cancel messages. (Ok, stop throwing tomatoes now...
# technology can be used for good OR evil, and sometimes its grey).
#
# If you pipe a message to this program, it will send mail
# to the author of the message asking them to cancel their message
# and not post non-source postings to alt.sources.
#
# It encourages the original author to cancel their message
# so that less people will read it (and less people will followup
# to it in alt.sources).
#
set `awk '$1 == "Message-ID:" { msgid = $2; }
$1 == "From:" { user = $2; }
END{ print msgid " " user; }'`
if [ $# -ne 2 ] ; then
echo "Unable to retrieve from-address and message-id"
exit
fi
msgid=$1
user=$2
(
echo "You have posted a non-source message in alt.sources."
echo "The message in question is $msgid."
echo ""
echo "PLEASE CANCEL IT IMMEDIATELY! The sooner you cancel your"
echo "message, the better chance we have of stopping more followups"
echo "to it."
echo ""
echo "Please don't clutter up alt.sources with postings that are not"
echo "source code. Here are a list of other groups that may be more"
echo "appropriate places to continue your discussion:"
echo ""
echo "alt.sources.d Discussion about programs in alt.sources"
echo "comp.sources.d Discussion about programs in comp.sources"
echo "comp.sources.wanted Requests for programs and information"
echo ""
) | mail $user
-- cut here --
--
The Constitution isn't all that great, but it sure beats the hell out of
what we're using now.