andy@icom.UUCP (Andrew H. Marrinson) (09/07/86)
I have recently gotten rather involved in administering Usenet here after leaving it to someone else almost from the beginning, and I am beginning to realize that things are in a bloody mess. Now, this is not an unusual state for any Usenet site to be in, but I would kind of prefer to set things up correctly. In trying to do so recently I have noticed that 2.10.2 news is obsolete and barely functional in a variety of ways. Most of these questions are about moderated newsgroups and the new talk.* newsgroups. First of all, I have a feeling many of these problems might be solved if we were running 2.10.3. I heard that this was to be posted to mod.sources soon. Has it been? It was not on a fairly recent mod.sources archive tape we received. If it has not been PLEASE post it at least a few weeks in advance of the naming switch, or chaos may well result. How are moderated groups supposed to be set up? We had our active file set up to prevent people from posting them. However create control messages set them up with posting allowed. Assuming your moderators file is in sync, postnews will send mail instead of posting, so this might appear to be the way to go. However, a recent posting to mod.newslists giving the list of moderators implied users should NOT be able to post directly to mod.* groups but should use a mailer instead. Also there is no automatic means of keeping the moderators file in the lib directory up to date. This seems to mean that if a new moderated group as created (as will happen in droves very soon), it will, by default, be created as postable to (in the active file) but with no entry in the moderators file unless I watch very closely indeed. Since postnews decides whether a group is moderated based on whether or not it is in the moderators file, this means such a newly created group can be posted to when it shouldn't be. Extreme vigilance would seem to be required. There is also a problem with the 2.10.2 handles distributions. It takes the first part of a newsgroup (e.g. net) as indicative of the distribution. So if you do try to use the automatic mailing for moderated newsgroups, it defaults the distribution to mod, and then refuses to accept this default, since mod isn't in the distributions file (at least as it comes with the Usenet software). I fixed this by creating a mod distribution since (in theory) such groups should never actually be posted to, and so distribution is irrelevent. A similar problem occurs with talk.* groups, but there is no fix for this (short of hacking the code). This will get *much* worse with the new naming scheme. I assume 2.10.3 corrects this nonsense. The checkgroups script we were using seems to be woefully out of date. If I may flame a bit, what the hell good is a script that is supposed to fix up the list of newsgroups, if it has the acceptable prefixes (net, mod, and the seemingly obsolete fa) hard-coded into it? This thing is worse than useless. Of course, I have fixed it, but the prospect of fixing it again when the new names come out doesn't please me. The whole checkgroups thing just doesn't work. It seems this is partly due to sites that haven't even upgraded to 2.10.2 yet, and so don't deal with this control message? I am hopeful, that 2.10.3 at least improves most of these areas. I am most concerned about the moderation issue. I don't want anyone accidentally posting to moderated groups, but it is also useful to be able to follow-up and appear to ``post'' to them in the same way as any other group. This is particularly true in the new scheme of things, where moderated groups are preferred. I agree that moderated groups are (in general) a good thing, but only if they are reasonably easy to use. In summary, if 2.10.3 is going to be published soon I will simply mellow out, and wait for it. (If it has already been published I'm gonna need to get ahold of it QUICK! Someone local who would be willing to let me stop by with a tape would be ideal.) I hope it addresses the above problems, particularly with moderated groups. I currently ``know'' I have an up to date moderators file, so I have allowed posting to moderated groups, but that just doesn't seem like a good idea for very long, given that it is almost a sure thing this file will fall behind the active file. All you Usenet administrators must have noticed these things, and I've heard good things about 2.10.3, so I'm pretty hopeful. Let's hear what you have to say. -- andy@icom.UUCP Or for those of Andrew H. Marrinson you who wish to ICOM Systems, Inc. play it the hard Arlington Heights, IL 60005 way: ihnp4!icom!andy
usenet@soma.UUCP (USENET maintenance) (09/11/86)
2.10.3 was not released since the name space reorganization was in
the works before 2.10.3 was going to come out. So instead of getting
people to change twice in one year, it was decided to not release 2.10.3
and just release 2.11 which will incorporate the necessary changes for
the name space and deal with moderation better.
I have no idea when 2.11 will be available. Ask Rick Adams <rick@seismo>
for that information.
All the problems you have mentioned have already been noted and will
hopefully be fixed in the 2.11 release. Again, ask Rick.
Stan uucp:{shell,rice,drillsys}!soma!sob Opinions expressed here
Olan domain:sob@rice.edu or sob@soma.bcm.tmc.edu are ONLY mine &
Barber CIS:71565,623 BBS:(713)790-9004 noone else's.