[Python-Dev] Re: c.l.p.a -- what needs to be done ?

[Markus Fleck]

M.-A. Lemburg:
> Could someone please summarize what needs to be done to
> post a message to comp.lang.python.announce without taking
> the path via the official (currently defunct) moderator ?

I'm not really defunct, I'm jut not posting any announcements
because I'm not receiving them any more. ;-)))

> I've had a look at the c.l.p.a postings and the only special
> header they include is the "Approved: fleck@informatik.uni-bonn.de"
> header.

Basically, that's all it takes to post to a "moderated" newsgroup.
(Talking about a case of "security by obscurity" here... :-/)
Actually, the string following the "Approved: " may even be random...

In principle, I do have the time again to do daily moderation of incoming
postings for c.l.py.a. Unfortunately, I currently lack the infrastructure
(i.e. the moderation program), which went down together with the old
starship. I was basically waiting for a version of Mailman that could be
used to post to moderated newsgroups. (I should probably have been more
vocal about that, or even should have started hacking Mailman myself... I
*did* start to write something that would grab new announcements daily from
Parnassus and post them to c.l.py.a, and I may even come to finish this in
September, but that doesn't substitute for a "real" moderation tool for
user-supplied postings. Also, it would probably be a lot easier for
Parnassus postings to be built directly from the Parnassus database, instead
from its [generated] HTML pages - the Parnassus author intended to supply
such functionality, but I didn't hear from him yet, either.)

So what's needed now? Primarily, a Mailman installation that can post to
moderated newsgroups (and maybe also do the mail2list gatewaying for
c.l.py.a), and a mail alias that forwards mail for
python-announce@python.org to that Mailman address. Some "daily digest"
generator for Parnassus announcements would be nice to have, too, but
that can only come once the other two things work.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this up again - it puts c.l.py.a at the
top of my to-do list again (where it should be, of course ;-).

Yours,
Markus.