[news.sysadmin] newgroup bug/feature of news

steve@cs.D.UMN.EDU (Steven M. Miller) (04/18/87)

As shown below, inews has a neat feature in it.  If someone does a newgroup
of an existing moderated group, he can change everyone's active file
to say the group is now unmoderated.  I wonder if the change can be made
the other way?  If someone screwed up and made a popular group moderated...

By the way, this was done to about 20 moderated groups...


Example control message:

Path: umnd-cs!uwvax!husc6!rutgers!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!laidbak!tedk
From: tedk@laidbak.UUCP (Ted G. Kekatos)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: newgroup talk.politics.arms-d
Message-ID: <1042@laidbak.UUCP>
Date: 17 Apr 87 01:20:41 GMT
Control: newgroup talk.politics.arms-d
Organization: Lachman Associates, Inc., Naperville, IL
Lines: 0
Approved: tedk@laidbak


From the errlog

Apr 17 00:25	<1042@laidbak.UUCP>	inews: Newsgroup talk.politics.arms-d changed from moderated to unmoderated

fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (04/18/87)

Yes, it works both ways. I sent out a series of newgroups & two
rmgroups that will undo the damage that pinhead from Lachman did.

Oh, one more thing:

WRONG				RIGHT
-----				-----
comp.sys.68k.pc		->	comp.sys.m68k.pc
comp.os.fidonet		->	comp.org.fidonet

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu

dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (04/27/87)

It's worse than that.

Once someone has marked a group "moderated" when it is, in fact, not,
EVERY article that arrives in that group without the Approved: header
(which will not be present for an unmoderated group) will be sent
off by mail to a nearby backbone machine for remailing to the moderator.

Perhaps inews should do the "posting to moderated group turns into
mail to moderator" trick only for locally-posted articles?  It doesn't
make sense for stuff incoming from another machine.

fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (05/03/87)

In article <15293@onfcanim.UUCP> dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes:
>Perhaps inews should do the "posting to moderated group turns into
>mail to moderator" trick only for locally-posted articles?  It doesn't
>make sense for stuff incoming from another machine.

We could do this, but that would mean that postings to the newly named
moderated groups from sites that still run versions < 2.11 will lose
(i.e. their moderated postings won't go to the moderator unless they
have the brains to mail it to the moderator in the first place). This
is not to say that sites running old software shouldn't lose, but I
think it's a bit late in the game for your particular suggestion...

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu

steve@edm.UUCP (Stephen Samuel) (05/10/87)

In article <15293@onfcanim.UUCP>, dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes:
>... 
> Perhaps inews should do the "posting to moderated group turns into
> mail to moderator" trick only for locally-posted articles?  It doesn't
> make sense for stuff incoming from another machine.

It definitely makes sense to do SOMETHING wth such articles. Letting them go
by 'unpunnished' could defeat the purpose of moderation. Something has to be
done to stop articles that get posted from sites that are MISSING moderation
flags.
  Perhaps it would be best to mail the message back to whoever posted it. 
Either way: the site with offending moderation file should be notified.

-- 
-------------
 Stephen Samuel 			Disclaimer: You betcha!
  {ihnp4,ubc-vision,seismo!mnetor,vax135}!alberta!edm!steve