NetNews Moderator's Handbook
Sections:
This is very dependent on the news system employed (e.g., INN, C
News, ANU). Refer to the documentation supplied as part of the news
transport software for the specific steps required to set up a
moderated group.
There are, however, a few general steps in common.
- Assure that the moderator has an active account on the system
from which moderation will be performed. Create it if needed.
- Choose and install the submission aliases for the moderator.
Two aliases are usually needed, one for receiving actual
submissions, and another for receiving administrative
requests.
news.group.name -> news-group-name & news-group-name-request
- Ensure that whatever server, filter or auto-reply software
will be used by the moderator is available on the system.
Install and test it if necessary.
- Install the forwarding entry for the moderated group into the
mailpaths or moderators file, or equivalent.
- Finally, the group must be created and marked moderated,
using the 'm' flag in the 'active' file. This is done
using the tool appropriate for your news transport. (Eg:
newsbin/maint/addgroup for C News or 'ctlinnd newgroup' for
INN)
The same steps are used to moderate a pre-existing group which is
being changed from un-moderated to moderated status.
If you have further questions, post them in news.software.b or
news.admin.technical.
When you set up your group you will need to establish two mail
aliases, so that directly posted articles and emailed submissions can
reach you.
- The address for submissions to the list. It is better if
this is not the name of the newsgroup itself, but something
similarly descriptive. For example, comp.source.reviewed's
address for submissions might be
csr@host.domain
- An address where requests and administrative information
should be sent. Normally this address is "FOO-request"
for submission address "FOO". Using the example of
comp.sources.reviewed above, the associated request list
address would be
csr-request@host.domain
Depending on the expected newsgroup and administrative volume, it may
be appropriate to have both aliases point to the same place, while
retaining the ability to reconfigure the destinations locally.
You will need to notify the appropriate people to assure the
mailpaths file
is updated. Usenet moderators refer to
Appendix A.
If your group is to have multiple moderators then you might want to
consider setting up a truly co-moderated group. This would be useful
for high-volume newsgroups.
Greg Woods <woods@ncar.ucar.edu> has written a program to support
multiple moderators. When mail is sent to the moderated group alias,
it is routed by sendmail to the program, which randomly selects one
of the list of moderators to handle the submission. The submission
is then forwarded to that moderator. (The program is available in
the moderators' tools archive.)
STUMP (Secure Team-based USENET Moderation Program) is a
robomoderator allowing teams of moderators or individual moderators
to moderate a newsgroup, via email or Web interface. STUMP allows for
preapproved and banned lists, has built-in forgery protection, and a
mechanism to automatically reject certain invalid messages. It
requires no tools on the individual human moderators' machines. STUMP
itself runs in a Unix account. It is currently used in many USENET
newsgroups and is available from
http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump
See Section 10
for additional discussion of team moderation.