NNTP/newsgroup questions [was: move to mailman]

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-03-12 11:49:56

NNTP/newsgroup Questions

Background:  Many Boost members would prefer to read the list via an 
NNTP/newsgroup client (because of better threading, corporate firewall 
issues, etc.)  Mailman has (separate) options to submit mailing list posts 
to a newsgroup, and to resend newsgroup postings to the mailing list.

Dave Abrahams and I think a newsgroup is worth pressing for, and I'm going 
to coordinate the effort.

The follow questions have come up. My tentative answers, sometimes with 
rationale, are given.

Q. Usenet newsgroup or our own NNTP/newsgroup server?
A. Our own server. KISS.

Q. Who will provide the newgroup gateway or host?
A. Andreas Haberstroh has volunteered. (I'll coordinate with him.)

Q. Open to the public or limited to Boost members?
A. Limited to Boost members. The best of all worlds would be a single 
signup for the mailing list would also enable newsgroup posting.  (Limited 
to members seems to me so worthwhile as to be worth a lot of effort to get 
it working.)

Q. How do we prevent spam and other off-topic posts to the list?  At first, 
this will be difficult and some off-topic stuff may get through.  The next 
version of Mailman will have a "moderate new members" option, like we now 
have with YahooGroups, so that should solve the problem.

Q. How do we prevent spam and other off-topic posts to the newsgroup?
A. Depend on "limited to members" to stop most of the problem posts. The 
key would be to use the same policies for the newsgroups as for the list. 
(In other words, intercept newsgroup postings, and forward them to the list 
only. If the message is accepted for posting on the list, then it will be 
automatically gated to the newsgroup. The reality may be a lot messier.)

Q. How do we prevent spammers from harvesting email addresses from 
postings?
A. Given the answers to the questions above, harvesting is less likely, but 
still possible.  Mailman has an option to "Hide the sender of a message, 
replacing it with the list address", but warns this may be annoying as 
headers no longer show the name of the actual poster.  Seems to be it would 
be better to remove the poster's email address, but not name. I'll check to 
see if that is possible.

Comments?

--Beman