Re: [9fans] Moderator's Note: comp.os.plan9 Newsgroup.

[john francis lee <jfl@robinlea.com>]

Isn't google the now well-known devil itself ?

On 07/15/2013 11:04 PM, hiro wrote:
> Will your replacement set up a facebook or google-plus relay then?
> I thought about this already for quite some time after I've seen the
> successful migration of both tech-savy and novice users to web 2.0
> services. There is just no way to argue against finally making it
> possible to fully exploit our modern touch-interfaces that also make
> it so trivial to include scrolling media rich content, images, videos
> without the typical mimecode problems.
>
> On 7/15/13, 9fans@mail2news.bath.ac.uk <9fans@mail2news.bath.ac.uk> wrote:
>> The comp.os.plan9 Usenet Newsgroup is a moderated Newsgroup.
>> Articles require approval before being posted.  It has been
>> moderated from here, the University of Bath, since the 1990's.  I,
>> the current moderator, will be leaving the University at the end of
>> this month and our Usenet server will be turned off in late August
>> of this year.  So a new moderator for comp.os.plan9 is required.
>>
>> Newsgroup articles are also sent to the 9fans mailing list.
>> Messages sent to the 9fans mailing list are auto-injected into the
>> comp.os.plan9 Usenet Newsgroup.  This bi-directional gateway will
>> disappear when our Usenet server is turned off.  So a volunteer to
>> take over this service is also required.
>>
>> Further details of the above are given below.
>>
>> Moderating the Newsgroup isn't labour-intensive.  For example I've
>> approved and posted some 18 articles in the last three months.  The
>> vast majority of these articles have arrived via Google Groups.
>>
>> The moderator will need access to a Usenet system and have the right
>> to post articles to a moderated Newsgroup.  I.e. articles from the
>> moderator which include an Approved: header are accepted.  Volunteer
>> moderators are requested.
>>
>> I suspect the reason that moderating the Newsgroup isn't arduous is
>> that the majority of the articles in the comp.os.plan9 Newsgroup are
>> gatewayed in from the 9fans mailing list at:
>>
>> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/mailing_lists/
>>
>> and most serious plan9 adherents are members of this mailing list.
>>
>> Currently our Usenet server acts as a bi-directional gateway.
>> The articles from the 9fans mailing list are injected into the
>> comp.os.plan9 Newsgroup and articles approved for the Newsgroup are
>> sent on to the mailing list.
>>
>> Gatewaying the 9fans mailing list into the Newsgroup will obviously
>> keep running until our Usenet server is switched off, but a
>> replacement elsewhere is ideally required.
>>
>> The minimum requirement for gatewaying mailing list articles into
>> the Newsgroup is to be subscribed to the 9fans mailing list and
>> have access to a Usenet system with the right to post articles to a
>> moderated Newsgroup.
>>
>> Manually injecting 9fans mailing list articles into the Newsgroup
>> is labour-intensive.  It needs to be automated.  There are probably
>> several ways of doing this, but we've set this up directly on our
>> Usenet server.  Our setup is similar to the following.
>>
>> We use the mail domain mail2news.bath.ac.uk for mailing lists we
>> wish to inject into Newsgroups.  Mail for this domain is handled by
>> the Usenet server, which is running exim as its MTA and INN as its
>> Usenet software.  All incoming email is checked for viruses using
>> ClamAV.
>>
>> An address in the mail2news.bath.ac.uk domain is subscribed to the
>> 9fans mailing list.  Email arriving for this address is checked to
>> see it has the correct envelope sender (9fans-bounces@9fans.net).
>> If so, the INN program "mailpost" is used to inject the message
>> into the Newsgroup.  The "mailpost" program keeps a record of the
>> Message-ID's it has seen.  So there's no problem with looping, ie
>> the attempted injection of the same message a repeated number of
>> times.
>>
>> Newsgroup articles could be injected into the mailing list by using
>> INN "news2mail" channel script.  However, betraying my original
>> Cnews roots, this is done by a shell script driven by the fragment:
>>
>> # Inject articles posted to the comp.os.plan9 Newsgroup back into
>> # the mailing list, 9fans@9fans.net, using a locally written script.
>> # The script should include safeguards against looping, ie not
>> # re-injecting articles that originally came from the mailing list.
>> plan9mail!\
>>    :comp.os.plan9\
>>    :Tp:/opt/news/bin/plan9mail %s
>>
>> in INN's newsfeeds file.
>>
>> The above script uses the news2mail program from the antique but
>> usable newsgate.tar.Z package to send email.  The anti-looping
>> checks include ensuring the Newsgroup article doesn't include a
>> header of the form:
>>
>> X-BeenThere: 9fans@9fans.net
>>
>> which indicates this was a 9fans mailing list article injected into
>> Newsgroup.
>>
>> The above may sound complex, but it's fairly maintenance free once
>> set up.  We clearly won't be able to continue with this service once
>> our Usenet server is decommissioned.  A volunteer to set up and run
>> a similar service is required.
>> --
>> Dennis Davis, BUCS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
>> D.H.Davis@bath.ac.uk               Phone: +44 1225 386101
>>
>>

--
john francis lee
246/3 Moo 22
Thanon Kaew Wai
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Thailand