wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (12/05/85)
Is there any way for me to do this, or, if not, what should I tell the moderator that HE can do? I have had some correspondence with Herb Lin (Lin@MIT-MC.ARPA), the acting moderator of the Arms-D digest, which is on USENET as group "mod.politics.arms-d". There were four recent digests which failed to make it to the USENET distribution (at least here at BRL, which, being one hop off the major backbone machine "seismo", probably means they didn't get anywhere on USENET.) [These happened to be Digests 22, 23, 27, and 28, if it matters.] He has mailed me copies of these, so I have them myself at my home host over on the MILNET. However, he also said: "Don't have access to the USENET gateway. Can you forward them?" I have written him back, discussing this, and told him that I would post this query on net.news: How can I (an ordinary mortal, not a moderator nor a wizard) do this for him -- that is, send these four missing digests so that they show up on !"mod.politics.arms-d", without him sending them out as duplicate mailings to the whole list, which had already received them when they went out the first time? Looking at the header of a recent posting in mod.politics.arms-d, I see a path of brl-tgr!seismo!cbosgd!ucbvax!arms-d -- does this mean that I can mail these Digests to "arms-d@ucbvax" and they will get fed into the moderated group? That seems unlikely -- if so, anyone could do a similar action and illegitimately post to any ARPA-feed "mod" group. There must be another, less obvious, method. What it seems to indicate is that there is a need for a particular individual, one with access to both USENET and ARPA, to be a for-real USENET moderator for the ARPA-feed groups, someone who can monitor the groups and catch gaps in numbered postings like Digests, and who can be a point of contact for the ARPA moderator to send replacements for resubmission to USENET, and to be publicized as the reporting point for USENET distribution failures (the well-known breakdown of mod-group dissemination). However, aside from this nice-to-have improvement, what can I do NOW to help this moderator? If there is some "secret" address that he should know to directly send replacements to, please some wizard out there tell him, and tell me that you did (you needn't tell me the secret, of course) so I know that it is taken care of. If there is something that I can do without bothering Mr. Lin further, tell me. Thanks! Will Martin UUCP/USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) (12/10/85)
In article <344@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes: >Is there any way for me to do this, or, if not, what should I tell the >moderator that HE can do? > In my case (as mod.protocols.appletalk moderator), there is an address that I can send to at berkeley that will distribute to mod.protocols.appletalk. >does this mean that I can mail these Digests to "arms-d@ucbvax" and they >will get fed into the moderated group? That seems unlikely -- if so, >anyone could do a similar action and illegitimately post to any >ARPA-feed "mod" group. There must be another, less obvious, method. In theory all you would need to do is send to this address, but Eric may have hacked the forwarding to accept mail from the moderator only. In any case, if someone does do this, their identity will presumably be disclosed in the message and punitive action can be taken. (This is sort of like the case of the Chicago radio pirate who takes over commercial stations by taking control of their studio-transmitter link (see net.ham-radio for details))