jon@gaia.UUCP (02/15/87)
News 2.11 added a wonderful feature for coping with moderated groups, by
transparently packaging a submission to such a group into a mail message
and sending it to the local backbone, where an alias has presumably been
set up. It is a nice feature in that it takes away the need to worry about
which groups are moderated, and how to get to the moderator.
The problem is that the subject line of the generated mail message is
something along the lines of "submission for mod-computers-vax". This,
coupled with the fact that a number of "moderated" groups are, in fact,
not moderated, makes for some aggravation. For example, the ARPA
INFO-VAX mailing list is called 'mod.computers.vax,' and is marked moderated.
However, all it really is is a mail alias that bounces messages back to
the list. Thus, mod.computers.vax is now full of messages for which the
subject line is "Submission for mod-computers-vax." Not very helpful. I,
for one, have gone back to mailing directly to the "moderator" for such
groups, since I would rather that my postings have useful subject lines.
Thus, the purpose for the new feature has been defeated.
I see two ways that this could be deal with this. One would be to just have
the subject line of the generated mail message be the real subject of the
posting. I don't know how much trouble this would be for the real, human
moderators out there. The other is to have a new entry for the "moderated"
field in the active file which would mark groups that are not moderated,
but which do need to be posted to through a mail message.
Neither hack sounds that difficult. If there is any consensus out there about
how to deal with this, I guess I could go ahead and fix it, and send the diffs
back to Rick Adams. Any comments?
--
Jonathan Corbet
{seismo | hplabs | gatech}!hao!gaia!jon
{ucbvax | allegra | cbosgd}!nbires!gaia!jonkre@munnari.UUCP (02/17/87)
In article <283@gaia.UUCP>, jon@gaia.UUCP (Jonathan Corbet) writes: > The problem is that the subject line of the generated mail message is > something along the lines of "submission for mod-computers-vax". This, > coupled with the fact that a number of "moderated" groups are, in fact, > not moderated, makes for some aggravation. > > I see two ways that this could be deal with this. One would be to just have > the subject line of the generated mail message be the real subject of the > posting. This is probably how it should be done, I suspect that the "submission for" was probably an attempt to make life easier for the moderators (the mail they receive would make it clear just what this is) but I suspect that in practice it really makes life more difficult, as the moderator has even more editing to do, and its likely to be harder to automate. > The other is to have a new entry for the "moderated" > field in the active file which would mark groups that are not moderated, > but which do need to be posted to through a mail message. This isn't necessary - the "moderated groups that aren't moderated" should simply be marked as unmoderated, with a 2 way gateway to the mailing list. That's done for a lot of other lists, it can certainly be done for mod.computers.vax and the few others in this category. These groups became "moderated" only out of an accident of history. I believe that this is actually going to happen sometime soon, Erik, care to give a time guestimate? To cope with sites still running older netnews versions, and in line with the general renaming, the group names will change at the same time. Robert Elz seismo!munnari!kre kre%munnari.oz@seismo.css.gov
chris@columbia.UUCP (02/19/87)
In article <1426@munnari.oz> kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes: >In article <283@gaia.UUCP>, jon@gaia.UUCP (Jonathan Corbet) writes: >> The other is to have a new entry for the "moderated" >> field in the active file which would mark groups that are not moderated, >> but which do need to be posted to through a mail message. > >This isn't necessary - the "moderated groups that aren't moderated" >should simply be marked as unmoderated, with a 2 way gateway to the >mailing list. That's done for a lot of other lists, it can certainly >be done for mod.computers.vax and the few others in this category. I'm curious as to exactly how the existing two-way gateways work. How do they determine whether an article was originally posted to usenet or mailed to the mailing list, i.e. whether or not to mail the article to a mail reflector? For our local mailing-list/newsgroups, I made a simple change to inews so that submissions to local moderated groups are forwarded to the mail reflectors without prepending Rick's headers, and set up a simple sendmail-inews interface so that mail reflectors can insert news articles into these local "moderated" groups. No special entries in the sys or aliases files are necessary, there are no odd changes to the headers, and it works like a charm. Why do something more complicated? My feeling is that if you want to link a newsgroup to a mailing list, you should treat the entire netnews distribution mechanism as one recipient on the mailing list; all submissions, whether done with mail or with inews, should be mailed to the primary mail reflector and then redistributed. Why should it matter whether a human moderator is involved? Chris
jbs@mit-eddie.UUCP (02/20/87)
In article <4350@columbia.UUCP> chris@columbia.edu (Chris Maio) writes: >In article <1426@munnari.oz> kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes: >>This isn't necessary - the "moderated groups that aren't moderated" >>should simply be marked as unmoderated, with a 2 way gateway to the >>mailing list. That's done for a lot of other lists, it can certainly >>be done for mod.computers.vax and the few others in this category. > >I'm curious as to exactly how the existing two-way gateways work. How do they >determine whether an article was originally posted to usenet or mailed to the >mailing list, i.e. whether or not to mail the article to a mail reflector? All articles received from Usenet (netnews) are mailed to the reflector, except those posted by the gateway software. Specifically, this involves using the undocumented -x flag on inews. Since the gateway software is on the mailing-list, it receives a copy of all messages, including those posted via Usenet. When such an (Usenet posted) article is recieved, it is rejected by inews, because its Message-Id is already in the history file. >For our local mailing-list/newsgroups, I [...] set up a simple >sendmail-inews interface [...] >No special entries in the sys or aliases files are necessary But an entry in the mailpaths file is necessary. >there >are no odd changes to the headers, Actually, to comply with the standards, you do need to change the headers, since mail needs a To: line, but netnews has none. >and it works like a charm. Why do something >more complicated? >My feeling is that if you want to link a newsgroup to a mailing list, you >should treat the entire netnews distribution mechanism as one recipient on the >mailing list; all submissions, whether done with mail or with inews, should be >mailed to the primary mail reflector and then redistributed. This works great for local groups, but when long distances and unreliable mailers are involved, it isn't so nice. Problem one is delay. Even on the DDN part of the Internet (ARPANET/MILNET), mail can take a day or more to be delivered. In UUCP land, it can be days. If you post a message this way (send via mail to reflector it can be a week before anyone sees the message. If you are posting a request for info or assistance, this can be bad. With netnews, your neighbors (and their neighbors, etc.) will see the message soon, and may be able to provide the information you need. Problem two is reliability. UUCP mail is notoriously unreliable. If you are mailing from a distant UUCP site, there is a significant probability that your message will be lost without a trace, or be returned to you due to a bad path or broken mailer. Add to this the fact that you won't know that your message was lost for a week (see previous paragraph) and thus can't resubmit it until at least that much time has passed. With netnews, once the message has been distributed to several sites, the redundancy virtually assures that it will reach the entire net (including the gateway site). Jeff Siegal
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (03/16/87)
As noted by Robert Elz (who keeps poking me about this [a good thing; that means it will get done]) there are about 10 "moderated" newsgroups that aren't really moderated; they're just gatewayed versions of ARPANET mailing lists that are also not moderated. These newsgroups will be converted to bi-directionally gatewayed, unmoderated status when the rest of the mod groups are converted, somtime Real Soon Now, by the reckoning of the backbone cabal... Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu P.S. Bi-directionally gatewayed means: mail from ARPANET appears on USENET; postings on USENET get mailed to ARPANET. Yes, there is loop/duplicate control in place.