Easy way to know if a UseNet group is moderated?

Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

John Doe wrote:
Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

They don't necessarily follow a naming convention.
So that's not a good way to detect them in advance.

http://www.usenet.org.uk/moderated.html

http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-...ewsgroups.html

"In most cases, you can't tell if a newsgroup is moderated
just by looking at the name. You will have to look at the
articles within the group. If you use my master Usenet
newsgroup list, it will tell you if a group is moderated.

http://www.harley.com/cgi-bin/usenet... match&adult=0
"

One of the news servers had an actual groups list page,
but that is gone. There has to be a file somewhere on the
server, that has the details (because the server needs it
to operate).

Paul

On Mon, 5 Jan 2015 17:38:44 +0000 (UTC), John Doe wrote:

| Just in case I'm missing something...
|
| Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?
|
| Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
| suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.
|
| Thanks.

If a post of mine didn't show up, I'd first suspect my ISP or some other level of
routing. With USENET clearly on its deathbed, I doubt there are many actively
moderated groups anymore.

Larc

On Mon, 5 Jan 2015 17:38:44 +0000 (UTC)
John Doe wrote:

Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately
and suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

I guess it depends on which news reader you are using. Claws Mail has
moderated beside the group if it is moderated.

On Mon, 05 Jan 2015 13:35:40 -0500, Paul wrote:

John Doe wrote:
Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

They don't necessarily follow a naming convention.
So that's not a good way to detect them in advance.

http://www.usenet.org.uk/moderated.html

http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-...ewsgroups.html

"In most cases, you can't tell if a newsgroup is moderated
just by looking at the name. You will have to look at the
articles within the group. If you use my master Usenet
newsgroup list, it will tell you if a group is moderated.

http://www.harley.com/cgi-bin/usenet... match&adult=0
"

One of the news servers had an actual groups list page,
but that is gone. There has to be a file somewhere on the
server, that has the details (because the server needs it
to operate).

[crossposting removed]


I believe you can also look for an Approved: header on each post that
appears in that group. Moderated groups will have this header on every post,
while unmoderated groups have no need for it. This header is inserted by the
moderator, or the mod-bot, whichever the case may be, and not by the user's
client software.

Moderated Newsgroups FAQ
http://pages.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html

Note that the FAQ is itself a Usenet post that was posted to a moderated
group, and therefore it has the Approved: header.

Paul wrote:
John Doe wrote:
Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately
and suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

They don't necessarily follow a naming convention.

OK, a bit more searching jogged my memory. The
file on the server is called the "active" file,
and it has the names of the newsgroups.

telnet nntp.aioe.org 119
list active

And that gives three samples out of 29000 or so.

mozilla.support.seamonkey 0000014458 0000011857 n
uk.rec.cycling 0000236360 0000233382 y
uk.rec.cycling.moderated 0000045530 0000044785 m

The article here, gives the key to the flags field.
N is no posting, Y is posting allowed, M is moderated.

http://www.templetons.com/usenet-format/status.html

The only problem with this, is in this particular
case the file appears to "flap in the breeze". I
can find moderated groups with "y" and not "m"
as they're supposed to have. And unmoderated
groups with "m" and not "y".

I'm going to have to guess that "list active"
is not a reliable way to get that information.

Paul

John Doe wrote:

Not a hardware issue.

Originally posted to:
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
alt.comp.os.windows-8

Reply sent only to:
alt.comp.os.windows-8

Not really a Windows 8 issue, either, but I wasn't going to add the
news.software.readers newsgroup (the appropriate newsgroup) in a
cross-posted reply issued to an unrelated newsgroup.

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Some clients will show an icon alongside the newsgroup when you view its
lists of newsgroups. For example, in my client (40tude Dialog), a
little microphone icon is shown for newsgroups with an attribute on the
server indicating they are moderated. You are using Xnews. You could
ask in the news.software.readers group to see if an Xnews user will
respond there on how Xnews might denote a moderated newsgroup.

The NNTP server, according to RFC 3977, is supposed to return an
attribute to the client indicating the moderation status of each
newsgroup. If moderation status is not available, the server is broke
or not configured to return that status. For the vast majority of
servers, they return the moderation status of a newsgroup. It's up to
the client to decide what to do with that status. RFC 3977
(http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3977), section 7.6.3, says the "m" status
should be returned by the server for the LIST ACTIVE command sent by the
client. Unfortunately as with many RFCs or their definition, many
conditions or behaviors are "SHOULD" or "RECOMMENDED" rather than
"REQUIRED" or "MANDATORY".

Another way is to look for .moderated at the end of the name for a
newsgroup. Not all moderated newsgroups follow this convention.

Off-topic nonsense...

Larc wrote in :

On Mon, 5 Jan 2015 17:38:44 +0000 (UTC), John Doe wrote:

| Just in case I'm missing something...
|
| Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?
|
| Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
| suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.
|
| Thanks.

If a post of mine didn't show up, I'd first suspect my ISP or some other level of
routing. With USENET clearly on its deathbed, I doubt there are many actively
moderated groups anymore.

Larc

Posts about UseNet are generic to all groups, Mouthguard.

--
VanguardLH V nguard.LH wrote in news:m8f845$h7f$1 news.albasani.net:

Path: eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.albasani.net!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: VanguardLH V nguard.LH
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-8
Subject: Easy way to know if a UseNet group is moderated?
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 17:52:37 -0600
Organization: Usenet denizen
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 23:52:37 +0000 (UTC)
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John Doe wrote:

Not a hardware issue.

Originally posted to:
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
alt.comp.os.windows-8

Reply sent only to:
alt.comp.os.windows-8

Not really a Windows 8 issue, either, but I wasn't going to add the
news.software.readers newsgroup (the appropriate newsgroup) in a
cross-posted reply issued to an unrelated newsgroup.

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Some clients will show an icon alongside the newsgroup when you view its
lists of newsgroups. For example, in my client (40tude Dialog), a
little microphone icon is shown for newsgroups with an attribute on the
server indicating they are moderated. You are using Xnews. You could
ask in the news.software.readers group to see if an Xnews user will
respond there on how Xnews might denote a moderated newsgroup.

The NNTP server, according to RFC 3977, is supposed to return an
attribute to the client indicating the moderation status of each
newsgroup. If moderation status is not available, the server is broke
or not configured to return that status. For the vast majority of
servers, they return the moderation status of a newsgroup. It's up to
the client to decide what to do with that status. RFC 3977
(http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3977), section 7.6.3, says the "m" status
should be returned by the server for the LIST ACTIVE command sent by the
client. Unfortunately as with many RFCs or their definition, many
conditions or behaviors are "SHOULD" or "RECOMMENDED" rather than
"REQUIRED" or "MANDATORY".

Another way is to look for .moderated at the end of the name for a
newsgroup. Not all moderated newsgroups follow this convention.

On Mon, 5 Jan 2015, Paul wrote:

John Doe wrote:
Just in case I'm missing something...

Is there an easy way to tell whether a UseNet group is moderated?

Kind of annoying when posting if the post doesn't show up immediately and
suspecting that it's because the group is moderated.

Thanks.

They don't necessarily follow a naming convention.
So that's not a good way to detect them in advance.

http://www.usenet.org.uk/moderated.html

http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-...ewsgroups.html

"In most cases, you can't tell if a newsgroup is moderated
just by looking at the name. You will have to look at the
articles within the group. If you use my master Usenet
newsgroup list, it will tell you if a group is moderated.

http://www.harley.com/cgi-bin/usenet... match&adult=0
"

One of the news servers had an actual groups list page,
but that is gone. There has to be a file somewhere on the
server, that has the details (because the server needs it
to operate).

Paul

There'll be something in the headers. an approval line, if nothing else.

Michael

VanguardLH wrote:


I see about 130+ moderated newsgroups from the Albasani NNTP server.
They don't carry all groups so someone, say, using Giganews might count
more.

Requires someone to volunteer their time to authenticate all the submissions.
Does that sound like a job you would like to do and for free and at all times
throughout the day?

That's why some moderated groups are robo-modded.

Software called STUMP is used. This reduces the workload.

Return-Path:
Path: typhoon.sonic.net!... arwm.stump.algebra.com!robomod!not-for-mail
X-ARWM-Policy: http://stump.algebra.com/~arwm
X-ARWM-Info-1: Send submissions to
X-ARWM-Info-2: Send complaints to
X-Comment: moderators do not necessarily agree or disagree with this article.
X-Robomod: STUMP, (Igor Chudov), C++/Perl/Unix Consulting
X-Moderation-1: Hassle-Free commercial hosting of moderation sites available
X-Moderation-2: See http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 03:42:26 CST
From: "Yowie" yowie9644 at ...com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.wicca.moderated

And the moderator could be a team of people, in different
time zones.

I agree though, that being a mod wouldn't be a lot of fun.
Even with help.

Paul

Paul wrote in :

VanguardLH wrote:

Requires someone to volunteer their time to authenticate all the
submissions. Does that sound like a job you would like to do and for
free and at all times throughout the day?

That's why some moderated groups are robo-modded.
Software called STUMP is used. This reduces the workload.
And the moderator could be a team of people, in different time zones.
I agree though, that being a mod wouldn't be a lot of fun. Even with
help.

Easy solution... Let the original poster moderate the discussion.

Works on YouTube. If only they had UseNet threading.

And to be even greater, let the moderation be hierarchical. Anybody can
refuse or allow a direct reply. Only original posts would be moderated by
the group moderator, or not at all. After the original post, the moderator
is the person you reply to. How much control you have just depends on how
many people reply in the thread after your post. Everybody would have
control over their own branch, the ability to delete everything after their
post. Simple and extremely efficient.

John Doe wrote:

Still not a hardware issue. alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt omitted in
my reply. Only alt.comp.os.windows-8 included in my reply but which the
OP apparently doesn't read (and why shotgunning to unrelated newsgroups
is inappropriate).

Easy solution... Let the original poster moderate the discussion.

So if the original poster is a troll to incite flames and also
cross-post to unrelated newsgroups to include them in the flames (so
replies continue the flame in the other newsgroups) then that's okay?
Trolls, spammers, malcontents, peuriles, scammers, and other bad posters
aren't going to moderate themselves. You really expect the bad guys to
behave?

Learn to use filters in your NNTP client (or use one that has decent
filters to tag the bad posters). Only YOU know what view you want of
Usenet so it is up to YOU to define filters for what view you want.
Even if you visit a moderated newsgroup, you are relying on someone
else's view to decide what does and does not go into a newsgroup.

Works on YouTube. If only they had UseNet threading.

No, it doesn't because the users there don't moderate the comments.
Either YT authors leave comments wide open (never moderated) or they
disable commenting altogether. That some YT authors moderate doesn't
make it a consistent or prevalent behavior. That they can moderate
doesn't mean they do.

And to be even greater, let the moderation be hierarchical. Anybody can
refuse or allow a direct reply. Only original posts would be moderated by
the group moderator, or not at all. After the original post, the moderator
is the person you reply to. How much control you have just depends on how
many people reply in the thread after your post. Everybody would have
control over their own branch, the ability to delete everything after their
post. Simple and extremely efficient.

Yep, that's what filters are for. Learn to filter. As to filtering out
only a subthread started by a bad poster, well, that depends on the
feature set of the NNTP client you use. Mine lets me not just tag bad
posts but also to tag all replies to that post; i.e., mine will tag the
entire subthread. If I don't want to see articles by bad posters then I
certainly don't want to see replies to that bad poster.

Note that I do not delete bad posts. I merely tag them Ignored and use
a default view of Hide Ignored Posts. Then if I need to look at a
subthread, usually because someone refers to it in a non-ignored thread,
I can simply change to the All Posts view. If I delete bad posts, I
can't toggle the view to see them. Plus any replies to a deleted post
means the deleted post isn't available anymore to which the replies are
chained. Deleted bad posts would result in seeing new threads that
start as replies to the bad poster.

Besides the regex available in Xnews, your NNTP client, to better
delineate which are the bad posters or garbage posts, doesn't Xnews also
let you ignore all replies (subthread) to the flagged bad post? Have
you even been defining filters in Xnews so you see your view of Usenet?
Those who want moderated newsgroups want someone else to do that for
them but based on someone else's criteria instead of their own.

There are no easy solutions if you're too lazy to define the filters for
YOUR view of Usenet. You could let someone else do your work for you
(moderated) and you get their view of Usenet. You'll find that
moderated newsgroups don't hide all posters or posts that you don't
like. It's their choice, not yours. A moderated newsgroup can consist
of very tight restrictions as to who can participate, like the group
only wants input from developers of a particular product, or their
policies as to what to reject for submissions is very liberal and mostly
all they filter out is obvious spam (although that rarely includes
posters whose real intent is to spam in their signatures). Moderation
doesn't mean salving the egos of a couple posters that don't like each
other and create noise in the group unless it is long term and volumous
enough to disrupt the moderated newsgroup.

You've got a good enough NNTP client so learn to use its filtering to
tag and views to hid the tagged posts (or alternatively use scoring if
tagging isn't available).

On Tue, 6 Jan 2015 06:08:39 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Paul wrote in :

VanguardLH wrote:

Requires someone to volunteer their time to authenticate all the
submissions. Does that sound like a job you would like to do and for
free and at all times throughout the day?

That's why some moderated groups are robo-modded.
Software called STUMP is used. This reduces the workload.
And the moderator could be a team of people, in different time zones.
I agree though, that being a mod wouldn't be a lot of fun. Even with
help.

Easy solution... Let the original poster moderate the discussion.

Works on YouTube. If only they had UseNet threading.

And to be even greater, let the moderation be hierarchical. Anybody can
refuse or allow a direct reply. Only original posts would be moderated by
the group moderator, or not at all. After the original post, the moderator
is the person you reply to. How much control you have just depends on how
many people reply in the thread after your post. Everybody would have
control over their own branch, the ability to delete everything after their
post. Simple and extremely efficient.

[crossposting removed]

That would pretty much destroy Usenet as we know it.


For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken


--

Char Jackson

Posts about UseNet are generic to all UseNet groups.

Apparently Mouthguard needs a daddy to moderate for it, since it doesn't know better than to avoid what it considers trolls.

--
VanguardLH V nguard.LH wrote in news:m8fvss$l5v$1 news.albasani.net:

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From: VanguardLH V nguard.LH
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-8
Subject: Easy way to know if a UseNet group is moderated?
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2015 00:38:21 -0600
Organization: Usenet denizen
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Sender: VanguardLH
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John Doe wrote:

Still not a hardware issue. alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt omitted in
my reply. Only alt.comp.os.windows-8 included in my reply but which the
OP apparently doesn't read (and why shotgunning to unrelated newsgroups
is inappropriate).

Easy solution... Let the original poster moderate the discussion.

So if the original poster is a troll to incite flames and also
cross-post to unrelated newsgroups to include them in the flames (so
replies continue the flame in the other newsgroups) then that's okay?
Trolls, spammers, malcontents, peuriles, scammers, and other bad posters
aren't going to moderate themselves. You really expect the bad guys to
behave?

Learn to use filters in your NNTP client (or use one that has decent
filters to tag the bad posters). Only YOU know what view you want of
Usenet so it is up to YOU to define filters for what view you want.
Even if you visit a moderated newsgroup, you are relying on someone
else's view to decide what does and does not go into a newsgroup.

Works on YouTube. If only they had UseNet threading.

No, it doesn't because the users there don't moderate the comments.
Either YT authors leave comments wide open (never moderated) or they
disable commenting altogether. That some YT authors moderate doesn't
make it a consistent or prevalent behavior. That they can moderate
doesn't mean they do.

And to be even greater, let the moderation be hierarchical. Anybody can
refuse or allow a direct reply. Only original posts would be moderated by
the group moderator, or not at all. After the original post, the moderator
is the person you reply to. How much control you have just depends on how
many people reply in the thread after your post. Everybody would have
control over their own branch, the ability to delete everything after their
post. Simple and extremely efficient.

Yep, that's what filters are for. Learn to filter. As to filtering out
only a subthread started by a bad poster, well, that depends on the
feature set of the NNTP client you use. Mine lets me not just tag bad
posts but also to tag all replies to that post; i.e., mine will tag the
entire subthread. If I don't want to see articles by bad posters then I
certainly don't want to see replies to that bad poster.

Note that I do not delete bad posts. I merely tag them Ignored and use
a default view of Hide Ignored Posts. Then if I need to look at a
subthread, usually because someone refers to it in a non-ignored thread,
I can simply change to the All Posts view. If I delete bad posts, I
can't toggle the view to see them. Plus any replies to a deleted post
means the deleted post isn't available anymore to which the replies are
chained. Deleted bad posts would result in seeing new threads that
start as replies to the bad poster.

Besides the regex available in Xnews, your NNTP client, to better
delineate which are the bad posters or garbage posts, doesn't Xnews also
let you ignore all replies (subthread) to the flagged bad post? Have
you even been defining filters in Xnews so you see your view of Usenet?
Those who want moderated newsgroups want someone else to do that for
them but based on someone else's criteria instead of their own.

There are no easy solutions if you're too lazy to define the filters for
YOUR view of Usenet. You could let someone else do your work for you
(moderated) and you get their view of Usenet. You'll find that
moderated newsgroups don't hide all posters or posts that you don't
like. It's their choice, not yours. A moderated newsgroup can consist
of very tight restrictions as to who can participate, like the group
only wants input from developers of a particular product, or their
policies as to what to reject for submissions is very liberal and mostly
all they filter out is obvious spam (although that rarely includes
posters whose real intent is to spam in their signatures). Moderation
doesn't mean salving the egos of a couple posters that don't like each
other and create noise in the group unless it is long term and volumous
enough to disrupt the moderated newsgroup.

You've got a good enough NNTP client so learn to use its filtering to
tag and views to hid the tagged posts (or alternatively use scoring if
tagging isn't available).