Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation

messaging (ARMM) A Usenet robot created by Dick Depew of

Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to automatically cancel

posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the

robot's recogniser for anonymous postings triggered on its own

automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this

stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of

Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of

1993-03-31 and proceeded to spam news:news.admin.policy

with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.

Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological

messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people

paying line charges for their Usenet feeds. One poster

described the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also

establishing the term despew), and it has since been widely

cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of

good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network.

Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's apprentice mode. See also

software laser, network meltdown.

(1996-01-08)