FAQ to The NoCeM Registry

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

The NoCeM Registry

> I'm a busy news administrator running NoCeM-On-Spool. How do I know
> whose notices I should honor to have articles deleted from my server?

We maintain a site entitled 'The NoCeM Registry'. This supplies you with information on active NoCeM issuers, which may aid you in your choice of issuers and their notice types you want to honor.

> Look, I said I'm *busy*. It's not as if I have time to study your
> information!

Got it. In that case, you can make it yourself really easy by just regularly downloading our PGP keyring and our default NoCeM permission file.

> I'm not sure I've heard of you.

We do not expect anyone to trust our judgment blindly. All information in and around The NoCeM Registry is open to any netizen, and our policy is based on criteria which are as objective as possible.

> Oh well, I think I'll accept just two or three big spamzappers.

That would be too bad. It would defeat much of the purpose of NoCeM, which – apart from performance considerations and from 'killfile' application – is to provide an authenticated third-party article deletion system, open in principle to every responsible netizen. Whereas the traditional third-party cancel protocol suffered from the problem of 'rogue cancelers', i.e., people whose cancels had better not be honored, the application of NoCeM-On-Spool runs the risk of an almost exactly opposite 'permission problem': that of issuers whose notices there is every reason to honor – but for news admins not having the time to ascertain that they should.

> Oh well, I'll get around to putting together a decent PGP keyring
> and NoCeM permission file – some time ...

You forget the maintenance problem.

New good NoCeM issuers come and join the club all the time. Occasionally, an issuer may have to lose their authorization to have articles deleted from your servers. For such reasons, once decent NoCeM files quickly become obsolete and have to be refreshed.

> Oh well, a colleague admin has offered me their NoCeM files.

Are you sure s/he has that much more time than you, then?

A rationale behind The NoCeM Registry is to give the Usenet community – news administrators, NoCeM issuers and regular netizens alike – maximum influence on NoCeM permissions, and reduce the need for administrators to exchange such information outside public scrutiny for sheer lack of time.

> I think I can live without public scrutiny over my work, and
> I'm not sure I want to outsource any authority over my servers.

A permissioner whose files you copy and use would not get 'authority' over your servers any more than, say, the author of your NoCeM-On-Spool software. If you disagree with some of our yes/no permission entries, any ascii text editor will allow you to easily alter our default files; see our section on 'How to Use The NoCeM Registry'.

> How much responsibility will you be held to?

We maintain The NoCeM Registry with the utmost care and with maximum openness to community influence and consensus. We check and update all information regularly. If nevertheless just one article would get wrongly deleted by an issuer whom we marked with a default 'yes' permission entry, we'd be ready to apologize to anyone involved in the incident. However, that's as far as it can go. If you use our information, you ultimately do so at your own discretion.

> Who appointed you?

We appointed ourselves.

About NoCeM

> But what is NoCeM? (I'm no news admin, I just stumbled in here ...)

NoCeM – pronounced: [nou'si:əm] or as if No See 'Em – is a protocol enabling authenticated third parties to issue notices which site administrators can use to delete unwanted articles from their news spool, or which end users can use as a 'third-party killfile'. It is intended to eventually replace the protocol for third-party cancel messages. Other kinds of application are also possible.

For details, see The NoCeM FAQ by Cancelmoose[tm].

For a formal description (in Backus-Naur format), see The NoCeM BNF by David Formosa.

NoCeM-On-Spool software
perl-nocem - NoCeM for INN 2.x, by Miquel van Smoorenburg and Marco d'Itri, site by Russ Allbery

Note: perl-nocem uses a somewhat different syntax for its NoCeM permission file; ours is compatible with c-nocem.

More NoCeM links and information
The Cancelmoose[tm] Home Page (‘outdated ’)