[leafnode-list] Moderated postings

[Bernd Felsche]

On Thursday 07 October 2004 07:56, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Jim Gifford schrieb am 2004-10-06:

> So the site that tramples over your Message-ID should be fixed to
> leave the original Message-ID in place; leafnode will also have to

In some cases, postings with unacceptabel Message-ID may arrive;
either pre-approved or for sending to the moderator. (see below)

> change its posting strategy in one of the next releases, with
> per-server queues and perhaps optionally assigning a _single_
> server to post upstream articles for a certain group, think
> group-based routing if you wish.

The group-based posting is desirable; especially if multiple
upstreams support the same newsgroup.

> Leafnode will try to post articles to moderated groups only once,
> regardless if leafnode itself knows the moderator's address or leaves
> the forwarding to the maintainer to the upstream.

In the latter case you could unlink the posted article from
out.going and forget about it once it's been emailed.  It's actually
posted from "upstream" by the moderator.

I'm slightly familiar with the problem because we've recently
established an NNTP server "behind" a list server for a Linux User
Group with newsgroups reflecting the various lists as local groups.
Articles "posted" are having to be filtered due to possible
cross-posting (another can of worms if they're moderated).
There's no "upstream". It server only "local" newsgroups.

The local groups are marked as moderated with the "moderator"
ostensibly being the mailing list (it can't be because of the
cross-posting issue as leafnode emails only to one moderator, but
the article is required in multiple lists). A "subscriber" to the
list is a mail-to-nntp gateway, which approves the articles as
they're sent out on the mailing list.

The "major" stumbling block is that leafnode won't accept postings
from "bogus domains", yet the mailing list software does (it
shouldn't, but it's seen as being leafnode's fault that it doesn't
accept bogus domains). We're working on the mailing list front-end
re-writing bogus Message-ID if they're obviously bogus as it has the
potential to destroy threaded views in email as well; as well as
"collisions" with existing articles in leafnode.

A significant number of mailing list participants appear to be
generating bogus Message-ID. Ideally; we should reject with a
nasty-gram; but pragmatism requires that we generate a new, valid
Massage-ID and preserve the bogus one as an X-header.

> Summarized, we see three problems:

> 1. your leafnode appears to be unaware the group is moderated,

> 2. someone, perhaps the mailman gateway, replacing the Message-ID by a
> new and different one in transit (this MUST be fixed, only that I don't
> yet know whose fault it is)

> 3. leafnode trying to post until the article shows up, rather than
> posting until accepted.

Number 3 is one significant point. If the moderator never approves,
doesn't the "posted" article remains in out.going forever?

-- 
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