jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) (02/15/86)
Ignoring the, as yet, undocumented charges of censoring, the two main
criticisms of moderated groups are the delays introduced in going thru a
moderator and the difficulty in mailing to the moderator.
Given the current state of uucp and internet mail, I think the mail
problem is the more serious one. My last attempt to update the my news
moderators file led me to believe that the problem is far from solved.
Consider that each new moderated group, change of moderators, or change
of a moderator's home system requires the manual editing of a file on
thousands of systems. Even with perfect mail the situation is
unworkable.
All this led me to wonder if their might not be a simpler way. The
basic problem is that posting to an moderated group uses a different
transmission mechanism than normal postings. As news and mail do not
follow the same paths it is possible to have one and be completely cut
off from the other.
All this could be simplified if the news software were responsible for
transmitting the article to the poster. What I would suggest is that,
for each moderated group, a companion "to" group be created. Thus a
posting to "mod.sources" would be automatically redirected into
"to.mod.sources". Each site would then have a special entry in its
"sys" file that said where to send "to.mod" articles.
For the average site this would be a single entry sending "to.mod.all"
back to its main feed. Immediately thousands of usenet sites have
permanently solved their path to moderators problem. Each "feed" site
would forward the "to.mod" articles to another site in the direction of
the moderator. The feed site would NOT send those articles to other
"downstream" sites.
At some point a "backbone" or other major site would special case the
various "to.mod.whatever" news groups and split them off in various
directions toward the moderator's home system. Finally, the moderator
would subscribe to "to.mod.hisgroup", evaluate each article, and create
a posting for the moderated group.
This scheme has the following advantages:
1 - Reduction of support required by sites. The average site
can feed "to.mod" to its' main feed and trash the
"moderators" file. A relatively few major sites can
optimize the paths to moderators.
2 - Elimination of unpostable paths. If a site can post normal
articles then it can post to a moderator.
3 - Redundant paths to the moderator are possible. Because each
posting is a normal news article with an article ID, the
article can be routed thru several alternate paths with the
slower paths being automatically rejected.
The only problem I can see would be a loop of "to.mod" forwarding. The
news software could be modified to check for such a "to.mod" posting
coming from the site(s) it was supposed to be sent to and send mail to
the local news administrator telling him a loop exists.
The changes to the software seem simple and would solve a lot of
problems. Diehards and posters who know faster paths could continue to
mail their postings.
Comments?
Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC
{hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|glacier|olhqma}!oliveb!jerrydww@stl.UUCP (David Wright) (02/18/86)
I think the suggestion (to have a standard route back to a backbone site for all moderators) is an excellent one - it would really solve the problems I've been having - and which I guess many others have too. I just hope someone can find a way to do it WITHOUT all sites needing new software! You may remember my carrying out a vote for net.vms, eventually 97:7 in favour (plus a few more late YES's and also "Now I've lost the vote, I look forward to seeing net.vms after all"'s from two of the "No"'s). But Gene Spafford suggested that with the change from fa.xxx to mod.xxx people could all use mod.computer.vax instead of creating yet another net. group. As he knows more about these things than I do, and clearly the net couldn't stand any more groups (that was several new groups ago, but that's another matter!), so we all waited for mod.computers.vax - and very useful it's been. BUT for the six months since then, I have NEVER succeded in posting ANYTHING to mod.computer.anything. Initially the new moderators had been left out of the local tables, but since then the problem has been getting to .ARPA. I cannot. No Way. Yes yes I know there are routes to seismo etc. which get gatewayed into .ARPA (indeed I used to get them to work 1/2 the time once). But now all local .ARPA traffic gets routed via the UK Usenet-ARPA gateway, and I (or maybe this site?) am "not authorised" to post through that gateway. And because my mail has to go through 2-3 "intelligent" mail routers to get out of the UK, all attemps to 'get round' the UK problem are either re-routed to the UK gateway or else returned as "unknown domain". I have had useful info to post to mod.computer.vax (e.g. how about a comparison table showing ALL the VAX's to 8800 incl., which would clear up some of the confusion about the new VAX announcement). But I can't get through. If it is not possible to route all moderator's mail via the backbone sites then can an alternative "pure" uucp address be given for all moderators, presumably 'aliassed' via a suitable ARPA route at some site which CAN get to the gateways? This would be REALLY HELPFUL.
pwd@pid.UUCP (Philip W. Dalrymple) (02/19/86)
In article <675@oliveb.UUCP> jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes: > >All this could be simplified if the news software were responsible for >transmitting the article to the poster. What I would suggest is that, >for each moderated group, a companion "to" group be created. Thus a >posting to "mod.sources" would be automatically redirected into >"to.mod.sources". Each site would then have a special entry in its >"sys" file that said where to send "to.mod" articles. > > >The only problem I can see would be a loop of "to.mod" forwarding. The > >The changes to the software seem simple and would solve a lot of >problems. Diehards and posters who know faster paths could continue to >mail their postings. > >Comments? > What about the groups formed from the old fa.all stuff? Those of you who deal with the link how would this effect the ARPANET link? If this could be done it would allow me (the site admin at pid) to permit posting to mod groups through the news software. (our mailer would require a lot of work on the moderator to make it work and I do not have the time so I turned off posting to mod groups). PS: Don't all changes of software SEEM simple :-) -- Philip Dalrymple akgua!pid!pwd 404/952-1572 (voice)
greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel) (02/21/86)
In article <675@oliveb.UUCP> jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes: >What I would suggest is that, for each moderated group, a companion "to" >group be created. Thus a posting to "mod.sources" would be automatically >redirected into "to.mod.sources". Each site would then have a special entry >in its "sys" file that said where to send "to.mod" articles. This is a very interesting idea, and on the surface seems to solve a lot of the problems with moderated groups and mailing lists. It may be that there have to be some restrictions on access to the to.mod groups so that, for example, people wouldn't subscribe to them, but I think the idea is worth a test. I propose that one (or more?) of the mod groups try out this mechanism. The entries in the active file would have to be hand-crafted and it probably would be impossible to get complete compliance, but if the backbone sites and contributing sites were to set this up, the method of submission could be advertised in the group itself and give us a chance to evaluate it. I wonder if a similar mechanism would work for mailing list submissions, with groups named to.mail.all. I am in the process of setting up a mailing list and the idea of using something like this intrigues me....... -- -- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA