montnaro@sprite.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (08/13/89)
Bob,
I've seen many complaints about people posting to the gnu.* newsgroups
instead of mailing to the gnu mailing lists. At our site, nearly everyone
interested in GNU/FSF reads the gnu.* newsgroups - very few people get any
of the mailing lists, so it's not surprising that we either forget or don't
know the mailing list addresses. (I'm guilty myself.)
I have three ideas for improving the situation, in order of (my) preference.
1. Why not moderate the gnu.* newsgroups (at least officially)? I
thought one of the features of the News software (correct me if I'm
wrong) was that messages posted to moderated newsgroups were
automatically mailed to the moderator. Couldn't the moderator's address
just be the mailing list address?
2. If 1. isn't possible, could the posting program be coerced to add a
header field (maybe Followup-To, or X-List-Address, or ...) to each
message that indicates the proper address to which postings should be
mailed?
3. There are 17 GNU mailing list/newsgroups. There's no regular naming
scheme for the mailing lists, so there's no hope that people reading the
gnu.* groups can convert from newsgroup name to mailing list name
without a crib sheet. Not all gnu.* newsgroups appear to have mailing
lists (gnu.config comes to mind.) The mailing lists aren't all hosted
on the same machine either. Why not create a set of mailing list
reflectors, all on a single machine, with names derived directly from
the newsgroups (e.g. gnu.utils.bug -> gnu-utils-bug@std.address)? The
reflectors could simply forward all incoming mail to the real mailing
lists.
Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.crd.ge.com)montnaro@sprite.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (08/28/89)
I sent this message to gnu-misc-discuss a couple of weeks ago, but never saw
it turn up in gnu.misc.discuss, and never heard from anybody, so I'm
reposting. Sorry if this is a repeat.
I've seen many complaints about people posting to the gnu.* newsgroups
instead of mailing to the gnu mailing lists. At our site, nearly everyone
interested in GNU/FSF reads the gnu.* newsgroups - very few people get any
of the mailing lists, so it's not surprising that we either forget or don't
know the mailing list addresses. (I'm guilty myself.)
I have three ideas for improving the situation, in order of (my) preference.
1. Why not moderate the gnu.* newsgroups (at least officially)? I
thought one of the features of the News software (correct me if I'm
wrong) was that messages posted to moderated newsgroups were
automatically mailed to the moderator. Couldn't the moderator's address
just be the mailing list address?
2. If 1. isn't possible, could the posting program be coerced to add a
header field (maybe Followup-To, or X-List-Address, or ...) to each
message that indicates the proper address to which postings should be
mailed?
3. There are 17 GNU mailing list/newsgroups. There's no regular naming
scheme for the mailing lists, so there's no hope that people reading the
gnu.* groups can convert from newsgroup name to mailing list name
without a crib sheet. Not all gnu.* newsgroups appear to have mailing
lists (gnu.config comes to mind.) The mailing lists aren't all hosted
on the same machine either. Why not create a set of mailing list
reflectors, all on a single machine, with names derived directly from
the newsgroups (e.g. gnu.utils.bug -> gnu-utils-bug@std.address)? The
reflectors could simply forward all incoming mail to the real mailing
lists.
Skip Montanaro (montanaro@sprite.crd.ge.com)tale@PAWL.RPI.EDU (David C Lawrence) (08/28/89)
Just so you know, your message had appeared before. I'm surprised Bob
or Len didn't comment on it to you.
Dave
--
(setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (08/29/89)
In article <8908281520.AA00694@sprite.crd.Ge.Com> montnaro@sprite.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) writes:
I sent this message to gnu-misc-discuss a couple of weeks ago, but
never saw it turn up in gnu.misc.discuss, and never heard from
anybody,
Yes, it appeared in the group, and I've had it sitting there marked as
unread all this time. Thanks for jarring my elbow...
I've seen many complaints about people posting to the gnu.*
newsgroups instead of mailing to the gnu mailing lists.
That's because some people's news systems give incorrect or incomplete
addresses in From: and Reply-To:, so when the articles get gatewayed
to the mailing lists it's very hard to figure out the actual origin of
the note.
1. Why not moderate the gnu.* newsgroups (at least officially)?
I thought one of the features of the News software (correct me
if I'm wrong) was that messages posted to moderated newsgroups
were automatically mailed to the moderator. Couldn't the
moderator's address just be the mailing list address?
Technically, perhaps an ideal solution. Socially, not at all.
Moderated newsgroups depend upon a couple dozen Usenet "backbone"
sites maintaining a list of aliases (see Spaf's periodic "how to
construct a mailpaths file" article). There's already one moderated
GNU group in that list, gnu.announce, and it was the first non-Usenet
group to gain such a distinction. It would likely be socially
disadvantageous (is that a nice way to put it? :-) to impose more than
that upon the hospitality of the Usenet. gnu.* is already accused of
enough.
2. If 1. isn't possible, could the posting program be coerced
to add a header field (maybe Followup-To, or X-List-Address, or
...) to each message that indicates the proper address to which
postings should be mailed?
That would require the modification of lots of posting programs at
lots of sites, and would be unwieldy if not impossible.
3. There are 17 GNU mailing list/newsgroups.
Actually, there are 20 groups now.
Why not create a set of mailing list reflectors, all on a
single machine, with names derived directly from the newsgroups
(e.g. gnu.utils.bug -> gnu-utils-bug@std.address)? The
reflectors could simply forward all incoming mail to the real
mailing lists.
Most of the mailing lists maintained elsewhere at least have reflector
counterparts on prep.ai.mit.edu, but they're named for the mailing
lists. All the newsgroups have hyphens-substituted-for-dots aliases
on tut.cis.ohio-state.edu, but those go into the newsgroups and from
there out to the mailing lists. It wouldn't be too much trouble for
someone (else) to set up aliases, named for the newsgroups, that would
feed into the mailing lists. The problem would be that there's no
technical means to automatically coerce users to use mail and not
news.
The best general solution, with the greatest "effect leverage", would
be to persuade administrators of systems that generate non-useful
headers (bad From:, no Reply-To:) to fix their news systms.jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) (08/29/89)
/ gnu.misc.discuss / bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) / Aug 28 /
The best general solution, with the greatest "effect leverage", would
be to persuade administrators of systems that generate non-useful
headers (bad From:, no Reply-To:) to fix their news systms.
----------
Exactly. RMS's request for having the submissions mailed instead of posted
should apply only to these misconfigured sites.
There's another request that he frequently posts: to leave gnu-X lists
[gnu.X groups] for announcements, and submit questions and bug reports to
bug-X [gnu.X.bug] instead (where X is "gcc", "g++", etc.).
Perhaps it would help to rename the groups gatewayed with
"announcement-list" into gnu.X.announce?
I realize that the original naming of the groups was chosen to correspond
as closely as possible to the naming of the mailing lists, but many readers
of gnu.* don't know the gnu mailing list naming conventions, and rely on
the group names for guidance.
--
Jacob Gore Jacob@Gore.Com {nucsrl,boulder}!gore!jacob