On 3/3/23 1:53 PM, Bugsy wrote:
> It's OK. I probably should have known it all but I think I figured
> it out because people on this newsgroup "said" you can post. All I'm
> requesting is for the web page to say that so people would know they
> can post after authentication and not just read after authentication
> (like some servers).

I agree that documentation is better than no documentation. I'd suggest
sending a brief message the the administrator asking them to clarify the
documentation.

> I didn't mean it as an insult. I just meant it as an acknowledgement
> on my part that I probably should have known the answers to what I
> asked just by guessing - but my point was that I can easily guess
> wrong because I know of some sites which don't allow posting even
> after authentication (I'm not sure, for example, what the netfront
> status is).

I think it's perfectly natural to not know and to ask.

> Well, not really.

Yes, really. Everyone has to start from noting and learn things. You
certainly didn't know how to type before you could walk or recite the
alphabet.

Everyone has to learn $TOPIC from a zero starting point. How quickly
they learn, what they learn from, who teaches them, those are all
different for each person. But they all start from nothing.

> The web page, I think, is great but it should add four things which
> can be links so they don't clutter up the web page.
> <1> It should state you can "post" after you authenticate (not just read)
> <2> It should list the newsgroups that you can post to (using a link!)
> <3> Somewhere it should mention binary newsgroups (not that I care myself)

Binary newsgroups are sort of like the 3rd rail for some news servers
for various different reasons.

If the news server carries binary groups or not is up to them. How they
publish that is up to them.

The existence of binary newsgroups can be somewhat addressed by #2.

> <4> It "could" point to a setup example for the i2P
> It would assume the i2p software is already installed.
> It can assume bogus authorization credentials.
> Then it can show the user what buttons to press in the i2p setup.

My opinion is that i2p setup & configuration is beyond the support that
news servers should be expected to provide. If anything, I'd expect
news servers to provide something that said "point your i2p client
$HERE" type thing.

> I agree since I've done torrents for example, which took me a long
> time to figure out how the process works but which I could explain
> in ten lines now.
>
> Also it took me a long time in the beginning to get tor working with
> the socks5 stuff and privoxy garbage where it's so complicated I just
> gave up.

Things tend to get more complicated, at least multiplicative, for each
technology that you add. It's almost as if the complexity is raised to
the power of the number of technologies that you are combining.

> Lot's of things are complicated but almost all of them would be a lot
> easier if someone who is providing the service provides a step by step.

Providing step by step directions is harder than you may realize. If
nothing else, you probably need to provide them for the X most common
client(s). And you need to keep them up to date.

Documentation is notorious for falling out of date.

Services that barely have time / money / resources to do the primary
function of the service usually don't have time / money / resources to
continue maintaining documentation.

It's a sad state, but it's a very common state in the industry.

> I'm sure I even had this learning problem when I first set up tin
> maybe twenty years or whatever ago, or when I first set up stunnel.

Sure. You started with something new from a green field. You had to
learn everything.

> An i2p example would go a looooooooooooooooooooooooong way to help
> noobs.

I suspect that there are examples on sites dedicated to i2p.

I provide Tor service for my remailer, but I'm not going to take time to
write documentation for how to install / configure / use Tor. -- I'm
not even qualified to do so. I simply have it functioning as a
communications method with my remailer.

I've looked at i2p and have decided not to do it (yet) because of
personal bias against Java. -- Seeing as how this is effectively a
donation of my time / server resources / effort, people get something
they can connect to using other documentation.

> Well, take aioe then. It doesn't do alt.home.repair newsgroups.
> Is that intuitive? Not to me it's not. Maybe to you but not to me.

If you asked me if AIOE carried alt.home.repair -- assuming their server
was working -- I would open my client, go to newsgroup management,
refresh, and search to see if it was there. I'd actually do that before
going to AIOE's site to find a page listing the newsgroups they carry
because I both know how to quickly do that in my news reader and because
documentation tends to get out of date so the query is probably more
authoritative anyway.

> The paga server doesn't do alt.checkmate (not that I care) but if I
> cared, I'd want to know that, wouldn't I?

(See above.)

> Those are minor but when you use the news.mozilla.org:119 server (which
> I think they took down), it only carried like a half dozen newsgroups.

The Mozilla news server used NNTP to provide access to private
newsgroups. The Mozilla news server was not a general Usenet news server.

> Same with news.novabbs.org which only serves an IP address from
> Australia. If they don't tell you that, how are you supposed to
> know that?

I would expect a news server that is country specific to say that
somewhere and to refuse to create an account if you are outside of the
country.

> My only reason for saying this is three things
> <1> They know it (the server admins)
> <2> The rocksolid site doesn't say it
> <3> And yet a noob like I am needs to know it

If memory serves, you could access the rocksolid.* hierarchy through
multiple other providers beyond just NovaBBS.

> I don't disagree that you guessed that, and you guessed right, but
> take the counter case of news.tambov.ru:119 which offers usenet news
> services without needing login credentials.

There are multiple -- what I'll call -- open news servers that don't
require accounts to be able to read or post. These servers are often
sources of spam and are generally frowned upon by many in the news
community because of the spam problems that tend to plague them.

> It certainly works (as I've used it myself in the past) but can you
> post to this newsgroup? You don't know. You can only guess. And that's
> the issue.

You don't have to guess. You can test to find out.

> My counterclaim is that some things that "look" like nntp services
> are more complicated, like the news.gmane.org:119 situation where
> (as I recall) it did NOT require a login/password so the credentials
> are blank/blank but you had to be pre-approved by sending them an
> email request first.

If you speak NNTP to the server, then it *IS* an NNTP server. Period.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

NNTP is simply a protocol to exchange news articles with a server.

Much like HTTP is a protocol to talk to a web server being completely
independent of the type of web pages that the server hosts.

> That's not intuitive that it works that way, right? Someone has to
> explain it to you as you'd never guess, right?

I vaguely remember reading some documentation on Gmane's site years ago
when I last set up a client to access them. I was able to successfully
connect using the documentation that they provided at the time.

> I think the easiest way to explain how (I remember) gmane to work is
> that ALL groups are moderated by the gmane admin, not only moderated
> newsgroups.

I always viewed Gmane as a read-only archive of many different mailing
lists. If you wanted to post to one of the lists, you had to do so via
the mailing list.

> I understand that a telnet isn't all that good of an indicator of
> posting but it is an indicator of listing if it allows you to list
> the newsgroup.

Probably. Maybe not. It depends.

> But why should someone have to telnet and list to know that the
> news.tambov.ru:119 or news.mozilla.org:119 authentication-free open
> servers only carry something like a dozen newsgroups or that the paga
> server only allows four posts every two days (or something like that,
> I don't recall).

Because they are /news/ servers. The /primary/ protocol that they speak
first and foremost is NNTP. They may not speak any other protocol.

Seeing as how you're dipping your toes into the news ecosystem, you will
be doing a LOT of investigation using NNTP or telnet.

The news ecosystem is -- unsurprisingly -- NNTP /centric/. Other
protocols tend to be considered optional and often an afterthought.

> Or that aioe doesn't allow posting to alt.privacy or some other
> oddball restriction when you would "guess" completely different than
> the reality.

In the news / NNTP world, try it and see if it works.

You can see if there is a web site, but don't be surprised if there
isn't one. Or if there is documentation, don't be surprised if it's out
of date.

Testing what you want to do via the NNTP protocol is probably the
fastest and most authoritative way to find out if something can be done
or not.

> I don't know that but I'll accept that you know that, but how do
> you know that, and more to the issue at hand is how am I supposed to
> know that?

I have some limited experience in the remailer community and some more
experience in the news server community. I was able to deduce what I
shared based on said experience and interpretation of the Dizum site
that you linked to.

> It looks like a 'normal' usenet server to me from the little I know
> of it. It just doesn't work the way you would "guess" it to work,
> which is why I brought it up as a counterclaim to the "omnipotence"
> requirement. :-)

Usenet and NNTP are not the same thing.

There are many things that use NNTP that aren't related to Usenet at all.

> I could try to post but I already know dizum doesn't allow posting
> but I only know that from experience. Which is my issue with the
> rocksolid page.

Hence why I say try things via NNTP. If they work, great. If they
don't, oh well. You might ask for help in various places or try other
things.

> It's not a major issue. But why should a noob have to guess? They
> could add the four things I ask in a few minutes since they know it.

Don't depend on much less expect others to provide everything for you.
You often need to figure things out for yourself.

Sometimes this is an oversight. Other times it's done on purpose to
filter out people not in the know.

> Then nobody after me needs to guess.

People are going to guess anyway.

> See! I told you I was stupid.

No, you aren't stupid. You are asking some good questions. You have
already assumed some things based on what you've experienced. You are
now learning more and refining your mental model of things.

> I didn't even realize that. It's OK. Thanks. It's OK to be stupid
> as long as I can fix it with your help. :-)

Not knowing and then learning is perfectly natural.

> I didn't know that but the only thing I am asking for is setup
> instructions for a noob assuming bogus credentials and assuming i2p
> is already installed.

I would recommend that you -- to borrow a phrase from other environments
-- learn how to swim in the NNTP / Usenet world as well as the i2p world
before you try to combine the two.

> Since they know that and since no noob knows that, it would be helpful
> for them to link to a web page that says what the i2p setup to their
> server is.

I suspect that many assume that if you are wanting to use i2p that you
are already familiar with i2p and only need the values to connect to.

They are focused on running their server. Tutorials on how to use a
mostly unrelated protocol are largely out of scope for them.

> See above. I equate them. But I never ran an nntp server. So I'm
> a noob.

/Running/ an NNTP server and / or Usenet server -- not always the same
thing -- is considerably different and more difficult than /using/ an
NNTP server.

> Well, that's not exactly true but I guess it's mostly true in that it
> depends on how a noob thinks about it. You're thinking like an expert.

No, it is very much true. At least the last few years Mozilla's NNTP
server was stand alone. They did not peer with anyone.

Some of their newsgroups did get pulled and feed into Usenet without
their blessing. I think that feed was one way too.

> As a noob, I know you could post to the mozilla.support.firefox
> newsgroup using almost any NNTP server, so for example you could post
> using nntp.aioe.org:119 or news.solani.org:119 or news.mixmin.net:119
> too.

Those were unapproved feeds that someone configured a system to suck
from Mozilla and feed into Usenet.

My understanding is that the official stance from Mozilla is that their
news server was private and stand alone. Thus any appearance on Usenet
at large was unapproved and unsupported.

> But it wasn't "exactly" the same result as if you had posted using
> the news.mozilla.org:119 server because it depended on peering and
> the like.

See above for an explanation as to why where you posted mattered a LOT.

> My point is that I can give counterclaim after counterclaim after
> counterclaim where what looks like a duck and quacks like a duck
> isn't actually a duck.

I don't know what specifically you're quacking at or prattling
frantically under the water while looking calm above.

Mozilla and Gmane were NNTP servers. They were not Usenet servers.

Usenet is a network of news servers exchanging articles over a fairly
common newsgroup list. Usenet servers /usually/ use NNTP to exchange
articles. However there are other protocols that they can use to
exchange articles. So Usenet doesn't /imply/ NNTP, it only /strongly/
/suggests/ it.

> It seems to be the same with the rocksolid server but I don't know
> that for a fact which is why I would ask them to just say the four
> missing things.

I would encourage you to try things and see what does and doesn't work.

I trust that there are ways to contact administrators of sites that
carry the rocksolid newsgroup hierarchy to ask for help.

> But to me, it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck even as it
> wasn't a duck. You know it wasn't a duck.

But it was a duck in that it was an NNTP server.

> But how would a noob like me know if they don't tell you on their
> information web page?

Connect to the server and see what newsgroups they carry.

How do you know what your local grocery store carries if you don't go in
and look around?

> I don't understand that above as I'm well aware that you "can" post
> to the Usenet newsgroups using your MUA by sending that email to
> mixmin servers.

That's using /email/, not news / NNTP.

> But this is a great counterclaim example for the point that I don't
> even know how to do that because I don't have an EXAMPLE in front of
> me to follow.

Mixmin is realted to remailers and an NNTP gateway therefor. That's an
entirely different thing.

Others in the a.p.a-s newsgroup can provide better help than I can.

> So I would post via news.mixmin.net:119 in my newsgreader setup, but if
> I had a written example of how to post using my MUA, I might try that.

Research remailers.

> But I'm a noob. So I don't know how to do that. I can't even guess how.

Research remailers.

> Well, the good news is that the list command went on forever for the
> rocksolid telnet, so I can assume that it carries "most" newsgroups.
I would not make that assumption.

The active file -- a file which lists newsgroups for the INN news server
software -- on my server lists nearly 46k newsgroups.

So I have no idea how to quantify your "forever" to compare it to 46k.

Also, not all servers carry the same newsgroups. Hence the phrasing
"carries the rocksolid.* hierarchy".

> But I did not know that until I ran the list command.

Which is why running the list command, or asking your news reader to do
it on your behalf gave you the most authoritative list. It probably
also did so faster than any other method.

Doing this also works for news servers that don't support anything other
than the NNTP protocol.

N.B. not all news servers have web (HTTP(S)) nor email (SMTP) services.
Sometimes all you get is NNTP.

> And, a counterclaim would be that if you ran the list command on the
> aioe server, you'd see thousands (or whatever) but alt.home.repair
> wouldn't be in that list (or that alt.checkmate wouldn't be in the
> paga listing?).
>
> Now how would you know that as a noob?

That's why you ask your news client to check the list for you.

That's why you go into your local grocery store to see what they carry.

That's why you walk up to a vending machine to see what soft drinks it
vends and if it has any in stock.

You try it and see.

> True. So true. But what they "can" do that doesn't get out of date is
> say things like "we don't carry binary newsgroups" or "we carry the
> main 8 hierarchies" or "we don't carry alt newsgroups" or something
> simple like that which covers their principles (which probably don't
> change often).

Some news server operators do say that.

Other news server operators don't have a website.

> Yeah. I figured that out after I had posted that by the "list" command.

You tried something and learned from your efforts. :-)

> That's all they'd have to say, which is what they cover, in principle.
> Their principles shouldn't change all that often imho.
>
> It's kind of like dizum only allows read so they can tell you that.
>
> Also paga limits you to about four or five messages a day. So they
> can tell you that.
>
> You can guess. But why should a noob have to guess when looking at
> the rocksolid web page for the first time to see if it's something
> they want?

Because people don't always provide everything that you want.

Sometimes you have to do a little bit of effort to find out for yourself.

> Yeah. At first I thought rocksolid was like the mozilla setup where
> it only allowed posting to their newsgroups - but the list proved
> otherwise.
>
> But why guess? They can say so in principle (which is a sentence).

You can also try and find out for yourself.

> Well, I didn't understand that line (remember, I'm a noob) so now
> I do. Thanks.

You're welcome.

> It just means they carry a lot of hierarchies, and, they carry
> those too.

Yep.

Each and every (group of) server(s) tend to carry different newsgroups.
There is a LOT of overlap on many servers. But there is still some
differences.

At some point in the future you may find that your news server of choice
doesn't carry a newsgroup that you want. At that point in time, email
your news administrator and ask them to start carrying the group. Good
news server administrators will try to find a source for the group and
start carrying it or provide a reason why they can't / won't do so.

> The funny thing (confusing thing actually) was that the mozilla
> hierarchies were peered so they "looked" like normal newsgroups even
> though they weren't.

But they weren't actually peered in the technical sense. One could
naively say that someone scraped / leaked the Mozilla newsgroups into
the larger Usenet when they should not have done so. Their action
caused problems and confusion for many others.

> It wasn't obvious to a noob who accessed those peered mozilla
> hierarchies using aioe or mixmin or whatever (instead of using the
> mozilla server).

In hindsight, Usenet server administrators probably should not have
carried the Mozilla newsgroups so as to avoid perpetuating a falsehood.

N.B. there is some complicated history about the really old Netscape
newsgroups, which I think were officially peered, vs the newer Mozilla
newsgroups which weren't officially peered. At least that's my
understanding.

> I only brought the issue up as a counterclaim that guessing isn't
> the right way to go about introducing a noob to a new server such as
> rocksolid seems to be.

I've always been more of a person to try things to see if I could rather
than waiting to be told if I can or not.

> Speaking of that, how long has rocksolid been running anyway?

I have no idea.

> Are they brand new like paganini? Or old but new again like blueworld?
> Or even old but nobody knew about like maddog.stanford.edu?

I would not consider paganini to be new, much less brand new.

> I don't think I was hostile. I was matter of fact stating that I know
> I'm stupid but that's the whole reason I asked for the documentation.

I'm glad to know that you didn't intend to be hostile.

> A noob can't guess right all the time. Even an expert can't guess
> right all the time.

Think about it more as trying eight different combinations late at night
and figuring it out before someone replies the following morning telling
you want you need to do. Trying things allows you to find out before
receiving the answer the next day.

> I'm a noob with the rocksolid stuff. But I don't want others to have
> to guess like I did.
>
> They know the answers to the four questions. They could just write
> them.
>
> I'm not complaining. I'd write them myself if I knew the answers.
> But I don't.
>
> Maybe. Maybe not. If you subcribe to eternal september, you get a
> nice email back that tells you how to set it up.
>
> Why can't rocksolid do the same when it comes to i2p setup?
Not all service providers provide the same level of documentation.

> They know it. A noob doesn't know it.

Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

I can't tell you how to set up a Tor client to connect to my remailer --
or any other onion service for that matter.

I provide connectivity via Tor, but I don't use Tor myself. I can't
support what I don't use.

> Not going to disagree with you on that one. Maybe they don't want
> noobs using i2p anyway. It could be like giving a high school kid
> a brand new ferrari. Not a good idea sometimes to play with the big
> boys without learning first on a honda.

I doubt that they are intentionally excluding people from i2p. It may
be that they don't know what needs to be done, like me an Tor. Or it
may be that they do want people to learn how to walk (Honda) before they
try to run (Ferrari).

> If I ever figure it out, I'll send a writeup to them.

I suspect they will be appreciative.

> I'm sure aioe not allowing posting to the alt.home.repair newsgroup
> but allowing reading to it is a result of that so I won't disagree.
>
> Same with paganini limiting the number of posts to about four or five.
>
> All I'm asking though is for that information to be provided to
> noobs for rocksolid because I have to assess whether or not it's
> worth the trouble.

Be aware that there have been spates of spam in the recent months and
news administrators have been actively fighting it trying to get it
stopped or at least slowed down. There is a very real chance that
they've not finished, much less updated the documentation to reflect the
recent changes that they've been trying.

Much like a librarian is a good resource for finding a book in your
local library, your news administrator is a good resource to ask for
help for your chosen news server.

Many news servers tend to have a local -- as in not feed to Usenet in
general -- newsgroup that is for help using the news service. Chances
are quite good that someone in that (those) newsgroup(s) will know the
answer to your question(s).

> Think about it this way. I know, for example, that battery jumpers
> they sell have the SAME problems as the batteries you're jumping, in
> that I bought one of them five years ago and now the battery is dead
> so it's useless as a portable battery jumper (it still charges though).
>
> Marketing isn't ever going to tell me the truth, so a review should
> have told me that they're useless (over time) since they have the
> same flaws as the battery you're jumping has.

Having been around cars, machines, and batteries, I'll say this: they
have batteries in them and batteries have a 3-5 year lifespan. As such
it seems natural to me that they would eventually fail.

I think it's unfair to complain about something that's only guaranteed
to work for three years after five years.

> If I knew that before I bought it, I wouldn't have bought it.
> Same with my 110VAC welder and 2-inch wood chipper. Same with the
> electric lawn mower. Or the lightwight so-called mulcher that they
> sold me at Sears.
>
> I had to go to the trouble of using those things to find out that they
> really don't work (in terms of doing a job that you need to have done).

That seems normal to me.

I know that Consumer Reports used to be a good source of information for
some things so that you could learn from other people's hassle. But
this process is a natural, all be it bad, part of a consumer society and
people trying to turn a buck.

> Why do I have to go through all the trouble to figure out how rocksolid
> works only to find out, perhaps, in the end, that it doesn't actually
> work?

You don't have to.

You can simply not use it and never know.

Or you can try it and find out.

You might be able to ask others.

This is also why many for pay Usenet providers offer a trial period.

> All they have to do is say that. It's only one additional word.
> And it shouldn't change over time because it's one of their principles.
>
> They actually have that but what they don't tell you is anything useful
> about i2p setup for a noob - but we covered that to death already.
>
> Also what they don't cover at all is what's the difference between
> their seven different servers? Nothing? Something? Who knows. I can
> only guess.

You will learn over time that Usenet providers tend to have subtle
differences despite carrying similar newsgroups.

I can only assume that is the same with the different servers that carry
the rocksolid hierarchy.

> As a noob, I immediately ask myself, what's the difference? I don't
> know.

So pick one and try it.

> Do you? How can you tell?

Pick one and try it.

Maybe pick another one and try it too.

Compare / contrast the two.

> I did say I was a noob so I agree with you I considered them one and
> the same. I had considered nntp the server protocol to the Usenet
> newsgroups.

NNTP is the predominant method to access Usenet newsgroups. But it's
not the only method. Nor does NNTP imply Usenet.

--
Grant. . . .
unix || die