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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!well!ptsfa!l5!gnu
From: gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: fa -> mod discussion
Message-ID: <190@l5.uucp>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 10:20:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.190
Posted: Thu Oct 10 10:20:51 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 08:08:00 EDT
References: <10542@ucbvax.ARPA> <831@vortex.UUCP> <10570@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 28
Summary: The "moderators" file must be manually maintained

Now that we've got that straight (getting enough sleep lately Lauren?),
I have a minor objection to the New Regime.  To post something to an fa
group, you could reply to the address in the header.  To send something
to an individual, you could manually type their address.  This was
painful, and not the same as other newsgroups, but was always possible.

In the New Regime, to post something to the newsgroup requires that
your system adminitrator maintain a "moderators" file.  This file is
NOT maintained automatically, since it contains mail addresses that (in
the uucp world) must be different for each system.  The old system
would keep track of the route the newsgroup had followed, and while the
path back was probably horribly inefficient, it had a strong
probability of working.  The New Regime won't work at all unless
everybody is conscientious about maintaining their "moderators" file.
(I do this for L5 and it took about an hour to translate the
"user@host.uucp" stuff supplied by the net wizards into uucp paths from
my location, for the existing set of 16 moderated worldwide
newsgroups.  You are proposing at least doubling this number.)

It would be awfully nice if the netnews software maintained this info
for us, but it doesn't.  When I suggested (privately) that fa could
convert to mod, I didn't realize mod groups required manual maintenance
at every site.  What do we do?

PS:  Don't say "convert to pathalias".  I'm waiting til *it* maintains
itself...

PPS:  The new newsgroup names *are* too long, but I won't haggle over that.