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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!columbia!chris
From: chris@columbia.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: A minor gripe with moderated group handling
Message-ID: <4350@columbia.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Feb-87 05:32:43 EST
Article-I.D.: columbia.4350
Posted: Thu Feb 19 05:32:43 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Feb-87 07:38:05 EST
References: <283@gaia.UUCP> <1426@munnari.oz>
Reply-To: chris@columbia.edu (Chris Maio)
Organization: Columbia University CS Department
Lines: 29

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