Handling moderated groups in software that doesn't
Jacob Gore
users of software packages other then the new-enough news software will be
greatly inconvenienced by the lack of automatic handling of moderated groups.
This need not be so. There is a very simple procedure that a system
administrator can follow that will make submission to moderated groups quite
easy:
1. Disallow users to write into the moderated groups. (In notes, you
can do it by setting the protection for "group: other" to "Read only".)
2. Notify users that to submit something to a moderated group, they
can send mail to the name of the group. (In notes, you can do it by
posting a standard "This is a moderated group, etc...." policy notes.)
3. Define mail aliases that will allow #2 to happen. This is extremely
easy to do: Just extract the "submission address" listing from the
monthly posting of "List of Moderators" in news.lists, and, if
necessary, convert it to the syntax of your file of aliases (you may
need to put in a colon after the group name, or something like that).
I have been using this setup for quite a while here, and I've had no
complaints.
Jacob Gore go...@EECS.NWU.Edu
Northwestern Univ., EECS Dept. {gargoyle,ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore