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From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: netnews bug
Message-ID: <3479@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 10 Mar 88 17:06:01 GMT
References: <285@mancol.UUCP> <114@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>
Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU
Reply-To: spaf@uther.cs.purdue.edu.UUCP (Gene Spafford)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
Lines: 32
Keywords: news src, bug

(Refering to a complaint that posting an article to multiple groups,
one of which is moderated, results in the article not being posted.)

Every few months we have to explain this again.  It is not a bug.
Consider what happens when you post an article.  It goes out
with all the newsgroups you posted to in the header so that only
one copy gets shipped, but so it appears in every group on every machine
through the magic of links.  Now if one of those groups is moderated,
and if the article were successfully posted to the other groups,
then every machine getting a copy will see the moderated newsgroup
and see no moderated stamp, so it will attempt to mail a copy to
the mdoerator and be unable to post it locally.  *That* would
be a bug.

The way it works now is that postnews sends your article to the
moderator.  If the moderator believes the cross posting is appropriate,
s/he will post it to all the groups (moderators can successfully
crosspost to their group).

If you want to post something to multiple groups, and you want
it to go to the unmoderated ones immediately, send it to
the moderated group separately if you don't want this behavior.
You lose the chance of tying in followups, but that is the price
you pay for being impatient. (1/2 :-)

The same mechanism takes over if you try to crosspost between
two moderated groups, btw, but the resolution is trickier.

-- 
Gene Spafford
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu	uucp:	...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf