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Russ Allbery | 1 May 2000 01:17
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

Erland Sommarskog <sommar <at> algonet.se> writes:
> Jonathan Grobe <grobe <at> netins.net> writes:

>> For what moderated groups that you know of is rewriting articles
>> by the moderator acceptable?

> I did this with a submission to se.internet.news.meddelanden - the
> announce group of the se.* hierarchy - fairly recently. Basically I only
> fixed the bad formatting. The initial action was to reject the
> submission and ask the user to reformat, because I don't want to his
> job. In end I found spent more time talking to this incompetent user
> that the formatting took.

I do this regularly for submissions to news.announce.newgroups as well.  I
also perform various character transformations and line wrapping fixes on
posts to rec.arts.comics.creative too.

--

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra <at> stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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Maurizio Codogno | 1 May 2000 15:50
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

Erland:

> > >       If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups
> > >       for which it was intended (in particular the moderator MUST NOT
> > >       resubmit the article, with a reduced Newsgroups header, to any
> > >       remaining groups). If the article is accepted, the moderator
> > >       proceeds with the following steps.
> >
> > SHOULD NOT.  Not trimming the newsgroups header is a matter of policy; 
[...]
> >
> > If we make the switch to OUGHT, I think this should be an OUGHT NOT rather
> > than a SHOULD NOT.
> 
> Just a "me too" here. That MUST NOT sticks out like a sore thumb.

Ditto for me.

ciao, .mau.
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Maurizio Codogno | 1 May 2000 16:00
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

wording by Charles:

> >       He MAY modify
> >       the article if that is in accordance with the applicable
> >       moderation policy (and in particular he MAY remove redundant
> >       headers and add Comments and other informational headers). He MAY
> >       inform the poster as to whether the article has been accepted or
> >       rejected.

Jonathan:

> I don't like this language; while moderators can add moderator's
> comments or strip signatures, there is a strong Usenet consensus that
> moderators should not be rewriting submitted articles (instead they
> should reject the article perhaps with suggestions as to what would make
> it acceptable). Yet you are saying "He MAY modify the article...."
> For what moderated groups that you know of is rewriting articles
> by the moderator acceptable?

I stay with Brad and Erland.

Modifications to the submitted articles may be made when just formatting,
corrections of typos and deletion of (quoted!) long signatures are involved.
I have some objection in trimming a long signature, however. 

The possibility to add a note should be mentioned explicitly, IMO. 
I'd even like tu suggest a semistandard format, like
"[Note from the moderator: ...]" at the beginning of the article, but
of course it should not be mandatory.
(Continue reading)

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Charles Lindsey | 1 May 2000 12:30
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Re: Replaces header

In <yl66t0i4nq.fsf <at> windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra <at> stanford.edu> writes:

>To correct a misunderstanding that was probably due to my comments, INN
>does not currently have fixed-length records in the history file.  This is
>an anticipated feature of a superior history implementation for INN 2.4
>that I haven't started writing yet.

So if you wanted to add the feature to current INN, you would use the DBZ
hack as described originally?

Though the proposed future implementation certainly sounds neat.

--

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9     Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7  65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
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Charles Lindsey | 1 May 2000 12:36
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

In <Pine.OSF.4.21.0004290131090.30841-100000 <at> worf.netins.net> Jonathan Grobe
<grobe <at> netins.net> writes:

>I don't like this language; while moderators can add moderator's
>comments or strip signatures, there is a strong Usenet consensus that
>moderators should not be rewriting submitted articles (instead they
>should reject the article perhaps with suggestions as to what would make
>it acceptable). Yet you are saying "He MAY modify the article...."
>For what moderated groups that you know of is rewriting articles
>by the moderator acceptable?

Various people have given legitimate answers, so I propose to leave the
wording as it is. Note the reference to "applicable moderation policy".

>On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>       He MAY modify
>>       the article if that is in accordance with the applicable
>>       moderation policy (and in particular he MAY remove redundant
>>       headers and add Comments and other informational headers). He MAY
>>       inform the poster as to whether the article has been accepted or
>>       rejected.

--

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9     Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7  65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
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Charles Lindsey | 1 May 2000 13:15
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

In <87hfclcwk4.fsf <at> erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth <andrew <at> erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:

>>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

> Charles>   If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups
> Charles>   for which it was intended (in particular the moderator MUST NOT
> Charles>   resubmit the article, with a reduced Newsgroups header, to any

>SHOULD NOT.

See my reply to Russ

> Charles>    2. The Date header MUST be retained,

>SHOULD

>(perhaps a note for these two that points out that authentication systems
>employed by the poster or previous moderators may be broken by changing
>these. But there are valid policy reasons for allowing both changes in
>special situations.)

See my reply to Russ

> Charles> 3. He adds an Approved header (6.12) containing a mailbox identifying
> Charles>    himself (or, if the article already contains an Approved header
> Charles>    from another moderator, he adds that identifying information to
> Charles>    it). He MAY also add further headers to authenticate that the
> Charles>    article has been properly approved.
> Charles> [That can be strengthened when we have defined proper authentication
> Charles> mechanisms.]
(Continue reading)

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Charles Lindsey | 1 May 2000 13:08
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

In <ylzoqcgpfc.fsf <at> windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra <at> stanford.edu> writes:

>Charles Lindsey <chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

>>       If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups
>>       for which it was intended (in particular the moderator MUST NOT
>>       resubmit the article, with a reduced Newsgroups header, to any
>>       remaining groups). If the article is accepted, the moderator
>>       proceeds with the following steps.

>SHOULD NOT.  Not trimming the newsgroups header is a matter of policy; we
>can recommend a policy, and I think the interoperability concerns warrant
>that, but it is possible to do this in a way that does not break news, and
>there are existing moderated newsgroups for which the moderator regularly
>modifies the Newsgroups header.

>If we make the switch to OUGHT, I think this should be an OUGHT NOT rather
>than a SHOULD NOT.

I now have:

If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups for which it
was intended (in particular the moderator SHOULD NOT resubmit the article, with
a reduced Newsgroups header, to any remaining groups, especially if this will
break any authentication checks present in the article)....

But we shall doubtless discuss this further ... In the presence of
authentication (e.g. pgpmoose added by an earlier moderator) this
definitely becomes an interoperability issue.
(Continue reading)

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Russ Allbery | 2 May 2000 03:46
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Re: Replaces header

Charles Lindsey <chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra <at> stanford.edu> writes:

>> To correct a misunderstanding that was probably due to my comments, INN
>> does not currently have fixed-length records in the history file.  This
>> is an anticipated feature of a superior history implementation for INN
>> 2.4 that I haven't started writing yet.

> So if you wanted to add the feature to current INN, you would use the
> DBZ hack as described originally?

Yes.  (Although I personally won't be doing that; I don't have enough time
to add the things to the current development versions of INN that I want
to add, and definitely don't have time to patch older versions.  But
someone certainly could do so.)

> Though the proposed future implementation certainly sounds neat.

The long-term goal is to get rid of, or at least significantly reduce the
need for, a nightly expire run.

--

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra <at> stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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Russ Allbery | 2 May 2000 03:53
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Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

Charles Lindsey <chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

> If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups for
> which it was intended (in particular the moderator SHOULD NOT resubmit
> the article, with a reduced Newsgroups header, to any remaining groups,
> especially if this will break any authentication checks present in the
> article)....

> But we shall doubtless discuss this further ... In the presence of
> authentication (e.g. pgpmoose added by an earlier moderator) this
> definitely becomes an interoperability issue.

Yeah, but they still seem like SHOULD-level problems to me.  There are
definitely moderated groups in which the set of newsgroups provided by the
poster is treated more as a suggestion than as a requirement; this
definitely should not be common practice, but it's within the realm of
policy and occasionally it makes sense.

> Note that my text does not refer to the case where a moderator accepts
> the article for hiw own group, but removes the crossposts to other
> groups.  What, if anything, do we say about that?

It's common practice in some groups.  I don't much like the practice, but
I think it's firmly in the realm of policy rather than protocol.  So I'd
vote for just not saying anything.

>>   The Date header SHOULD be retained, except that if it is stale the
>>   moderator may replace it with the current date if appropriate (such as
>>   if the delay in injection were due to moderation delays).  If the
>>   moderator replaces the Date header, the moderator takes responsibility
(Continue reading)

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Paul Overell | 2 May 2000 10:31

Re: Duties of Moderators and Gateways

In article <200004281621.RAA25897 <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk>, Charles Lindsey
<chl <at> clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>8.7.  Duties of a Moderator
>
>   A Moderator receives news articles by email, decides whether to
>   accept them and, if so, either injects them into the news stream or
>   forwards them to further moderators.
>
>   A moderator processes an article, as submitted to any newsgroup that
>   he moderates, as follows:
>
>   1. He decides, 

At the risk of being labelled Politically Correct, can we lose the "he"
and recast this section to be sex-neutral?

For example, by replacing "he" with "the moderator" as appropriate.

Regards  

--

-- 
Paul Overell                                             T U R N P I K E
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