Re: [Q]: Gnus and moderated ML and/or Newsgroup

[Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms@attbi.com>]

ding@daphne.gnuu.de (Thomas Hühn) writes:

> Also sprach Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms@attbi.com>:
>> Just out of curiosity, I wonder why the moderation package is not
>> included in the standard Gnus package.

> I think this may explain it (comment from gnus-mdrtn.el):

> ;; This package is designed for enabling moderators to do various
> ;; spiffy things while moderating groups.  Some of these things are
> ;; rather evil if done by non-moderators -- cancelling other people's
> ;; articles, including Approved headers and so on.  So while this file
> ;; is GPL'd and there therefore is no distribution restriction --
> ;; please do not put this file at any public sites.  All people who
> ;; want a copy can get one, but let's try to keep this potentially
> ;; dangerous package out of the hands of Evil People, ok?  Pretty
> ;; please?

> Whether this really works is a different question, but at least I have
> not noticed anyone putting it on my.gnus.org. *g*

I will admit that I haven't really looked into the workings of nntp
very much, but my impression from that is that it does not have even a
minimal amount of security, which is surprising.  Presumably, anyone
who can read the protocol specification would be able to implement the
equivalent to gnus-mdrtn.el, and thus do all of those `evil things.'

-- 
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard