Jeremy> Any other ideas? Suggestions on how to proceed? How about decouple the python-announce mailing list from the newsgroup (at least partially), manage the mailing list from Mailman (it probably already is), then require moderator approval to post? With a handful of moderators (5-10), the individual effort should be fairly low. You can set up the default reject message to be strongly related to the aims of the list so that most of the time the moderator needs only to click the approve or drop buttons or make a slight edit to the response and click the reject button. -- Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/ skip@mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/

Jeremy Hylton wrote:

As many of you have probably noticed, the moderators of comp.lang.python.announce do not deal with pending messages in a timely manner. There have been no new posts since Mar 27, and delays of several weeks were common before then.

and as noted on c.l.py, those posts didn't make it to many servers, since they use "00" instead of "2000". I haven't seen any announcements on any local news- server since last year.

Any other ideas? Suggestions on how to proceed.

post to comp.lang.python, and tell people who don't want to read the newsgroup to watch the python.org news page and/or the daily python URL? <0.5 wink> </F>

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"JH" == Jeremy Hylton writes:

JH> - De-couple the moderation of comp.lang.python.announce and of JH> python-annouce@python.org. We could keep the gateway between JH> the lists going, but have different moderators for the mailing JH> list. This would be less convenient for people who prefer to JH> read news, but would at least get announcement out in a timely JH> fashion. We could do this -- and in fact, this was the effective set up until a couple of weeks ago. We'd set it up as a moderated group, so that /every/ message is held for approval. I'd have to investigate, but we probably don't want to hold messages that originate on Usenet. Of course, gating back to Usenet will still be held up for c.l.py.a's moderators. Still, I'd rather not do this. It would be best to get more moderators helping out with the c.l.py.a content. -Barry

On Tue, 18 Apr 2000, Jeremy Hylton wrote:

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"GvR" == Guido van Rossum writes: ... GvR> If Marcus and Gandalf don't moderate quickly the community can GvR> oust them.

A painful process. Vladimir/Gandalf seems to have disappeared completely. (The original message in this thread bounced when I sent it to him.) The only way to add new moderators without Marcus's help is to have a new RFD/CFV process. It would be like creating the newsgroup all over again, except we'd have to convince the moderator of news.announce.newsgroups that the current moderator was unfit first.

Nevertheless, adding more moderators is the "proper" answer to the problem. Even if it is difficult to get more moderators into the system, there doesn't seem to be a better alternative. Altering the mailing list gateway will simply serve to create divergent announcement forums. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

Glad to hear from you, Marcus! I'm willing to help with both (a) and (b). I'll talk to Barry about the Mailman issues tomorrow. Jeremy

I can help moderate as well. --david ascher

Barry A. Warsaw:

What it sounds like Markus is proposing is that the official Usenet moderator address would be a mailing list. It would be a closed mailing list whose members are approved moderators, with a shared Mailman alias. Any message posted there would be held for approval, and once approved, it would be injected directly into Usenet, with the appropriate magic header.

Exactly. (In fact, each approved message could be both posted to Usenet and forwarded to the subscription-based shadow mailing list at the same time.)

I think I know what I'd need to add to Mailman to support this, though it'll be a little tricky. I need to know exactly how approved messages should be posted to Usenet. Does someone have a URL reference to this procedure, or is it easy enough to explain?

Basically, you need two headers: Newsgroups: comp.lang.python.announce Approved: python-announce@python.org The field contents of the "Approved:" header are in fact never checked for validity; it only has to be non-empty for the message to be successfully posted to a moderated newsgroup. (BTW, posting to the "alt.hackers" newsgroup actually relies on posters inserting "Approved: whatever" headers on their own, because "alt.hackers" is a moderated newsgroup without a moderator. You need to "hack" the Usenet moderation mechanism to be able to post there. :-) Because of the simplicity of this mechanism, no cross-posting to another moderated newsgroup should occur when posting an approved message to Usenet; e.g. if someone cross-posts to comp.lang.python, comp.lang.python.announce, comp.os.linux.misc and comp.os.linux.announce, the posting will go to the moderation e-mail address of the first moderated newsgroup in the "Newsgroups:" header supplied by the author's Usenet posting agent. (I.e., in this case, clpa@starship.skyport.net, if the header enumerates newsgroups in the above-mentioned order, "c.l.py,c.l.py.a,c.o.l.a,c.o.l.m".) Ideally, the moderators (or moderation software) of this first moderated newsgroup should split the posting up accordingly: a) remove names of newsgroups that we want to handle ourselves (e.g. c.l.py.a, possibly also c.l.py if cross-posted), and re-post the otherwise unchanged message to Usenet with only a changed "Newsgroups:" header (Headers: "Newsgroups: c.o.l.a,c.o.l.m" / no "Approved:" header added) -> this is necessary for the message to ever reach c.o.l.a and c.o.l.m -> the message will get forwarded by the Usenet server software to the moderation address of c.o.l.a, which is the first moderated newsgroup in the remaining list of newsgroups c) approve (or reject) posting to c.l.py.a and/or c.l.py (Headers: "Newsgroups: c.l.py.a" or "Newsgroups: c.l.py.a,c.l.py" or "Newsgroups: c.l.py" / an "Approved: python-announce@python.org" header may always be added, but is only necessary if also posting to c.l.py.a) According to the c.l.py.a posting guidelines, a "Followup-To:" header, will be added, if it doesn't exist yet, pointing to c.l.py for follow-up messages ("Follow-Up: c.l.py"). While a) may always happen automatically, prior to moderation, and needs to be custom-tailored for our c.l.py.a/c.l.py use case, the moderation software for b), i.e. Mailman, should allow moderators to adjust the "Newsgroups:" header while approving a message. It might also be nice to have an "X-Original-Newsgroups:" line in Mailman with a copy of the original "Newsgroups:" line. Regarding headers, usually e-mail will allow and forward almost any non-standard header field (a feature that is used to preserve the "Newsgroups:" header even when forwarding a posting to an e-mail address), but the Usenet server software may not accept all kinds of headers, so that just before posting, only known "standard" header fields should be preserved; any "X-*:" headers, for example, might be candidates for removal prior to posting, because some Usenet servers return strange errors when a message is posted that contains certain special "X-*:" headers. OTOH, AFAIK, the posting agent should generate and add a unique "Message-ID:" header for each Usenet posting itself. But if you have a Usenet forwarding agent already running, much of this should be implemented there already. Okay, now some links to resources and FAQs on that subject: Moderated Newsgroups FAQ http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html USENET Moderators Archive http://www.landfield.com/moderators/ NetNews Moderators Handbook - 5.2.1 Approved: Line http://www.landfield.com/usenet/moderators/handbook/mod05.html#5.2.1 Please e-mail me if you have any further questions. Yours, Markus.