Re: [boost] Need volunteer to supply Boost NNTP/newsgroup server

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-03-31 18:09:08

Dietmar,

The main thing preventing us from making this transition simply and
painlessly is lack of expertise. If we can raise the neccessary
computing resources, would you be willing to set up the system?

-Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dietmar Kuehl" <dietmar_kuehl_at_[hidden]>

> False in all accounts! Nothing requires the "moderator" of a newsgroup
> to be a human person. Almost certainly, there will  be an
administrator
> who is responsible for having things work smoothly but this is already
> the case anyway (however, with the creation of a newsgroup I can
imagine
> that a new administrator would be added to deal with the newsgroup
> related stuff).
>
> Concering posting delays, this is not required at all: Submissions to
> newsgroups can be handled by a script which eg. checks that the "From"
> header indicates a registered person and if this is the case just
sends
> the article forward. In de.comp.lang.iso-c++ we use a variation on
this
> scheme adding a little bit more control: Unknown poster's articles are
> sent to a moderator for manual processing (in this case indeed adding
a
> moderation delay) as are article containing specific keywords (like
eg.
> "ActiveX" which is, by itself, off-topic in this newsgroup). Articles
of
> known and "well-behaved" posters are approved directly without human
> intervention. That is, at this point there is no moderation delay
beyond
> sending an e-mail to some remote host.
>
> Since people also mentioned a propagation delay (which is, however, on
> all servers I ever used in the area of minutes), just note that it is
> trivial to sent approved article not only to the newssystem but also
to
> corresponding mailing lists: In this case the propagation delay is the
> same as the current delay. Of course, the system can be made such that
> it does not matter whether an article is posted to the newsgroup or to
> the mailing list...
>
> Concerning e-mail harvesting, I don't think that this is a big
problem:
>
> I'm posting regularily since several years and the majority of spam I
> get can be tracked to other activities rather than my news activity.
> However, the scripts handling the moderation process can easily mangle
> all known headers and/or all occurances of things looking like an
e-mail
> address. No big deal.
>
>
> I think that a public newsgroup is the way to go. On the other hand,
> nothing prevents us from having multiple forums anyway and public
> newsgroup, eg. comp.lang.c++.boost, is probably a good idea even if
> we stick with mailing lists, too.
>
> Regards,
>    Dietmar
> --
> <mailto:dietmar_kuehl_at_[hidden]> <http://www.dietmar-kuehl.de/>
> Phaidros eaSE - Easy Software Engineering: <http://www.phaidros.com/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Unsubscribe & other changes:
http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost