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

[hiro <23hiro@gmail.com>]

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
>
>