robo-moderation

Amen! Thanks, Dick!

But Dick, please do keep making your occasional observations -- they add a lot to the discussion. (Notice I didn't say a lot of what .)

Katie in San Diego

Katie wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:

Hear, hear (from a lurker)

I've always considered Dick to be the "head of the class" among moderators and hope that he will continue his active involvement here.

-HW "Skip" Weldon Columbia, SC

In general, I agree. However, there is a problem with the feedback messages.

At my news server, messages are forwarded using the news-server-process's user, not the user ID of the poster. This means that the news server itself gets the confirmation message. I tried to turn them off, but that didn't work either.

That is not correct.

Your submissions arrive with this in the header:

Reply-To: "D. Stussy"

and that is the address to which confirmation messages are sent.

It's your decision to put an invalid address in the header of your messages (I personally find this practice contrary to the spirit of the Usenet, but I gave up that particular battle years ago, excepting occasional flare-ups like this parenthetical comment). However, if you do this, then you shouldn't expect the newsgroup's moderation software to be able to send you email. It can't reach you if you lie to it about your address.

Well, no, it didn't, because the address from which you sent the request to turn off the acknowledgments differs from the address shown above. The moderation software cannot read minds, ergo it cannot know that the person making the noack request from address is the same as the person who posts to the newsgroup using address as his return address.

I have added the address shown above to the noack list. If there is some other address you would like to add, and you are not able to get your email client to generate an email message with From: line matching the address you use to post, then you may email me privately and I will add you to the noack list by hand.

innews: snipped-for-privacy@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:

text -

Dick Who?

Just kidding., Dick, if you're ever in my area stop in and we'll drop a could of straws in a bottle of single malt! This group wouldn't be without you.

Gene E. Utterback, EA, RFC, ABA

In addition, I don't know that there's been a formal decision, but it seems to me that adding someone to the whitelist who uses a fake email address is just asking for trouble.

Personally I use a real email address that looks fake. It seems to accomplish the purpose.

Stu

Actually, that's not what I'm seeing.

Submission - from system logs: Jan 22 15:32:02 (none) sendmail[13837]: m0MNW2SJ013837: from=newsserv, size72, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=, relay=n ewsserv@localhost Jan 22 15:32:09 (none) sendmail[13839]: STARTTLS=client, relay=moderators.supernews.net., version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=OK, cipher®S256-SHA, b its%6/256 Jan 22 15:32:14 (none) sendmail[13839]: m0MNW2SJ013837: to= snipped-for-privacy@moderators.isc.org, ctladdr=newsserv (9/13), delay:00:12, x delay:00:12, mailer=esmtp, pri1472, relay=moderators.supernews.net. [216.168.1.22], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (OK id=1JHSbA-0008wF-0X)

That clearly shows that the "newsserv" user is the sender.

Reply - from logs: Jan 22 15:38:34 (none) sendmail[14726]: STARTTLS=server, relay=jik3.kamens.brookline.ma.us [128.177.28.63], version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=NO, ci pher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, bits%6/256 Jan 22 15:38:35 (none) sendmail[14726]: m0MNcSFv014726: ruleset=check_mail, arg1=, relay=jik3.kamens.brookline.ma.us [128.

Because of the invalid username part ("devnull", used by many spammers), I don't ever actually see the reply as the mail is killed before "RCPT TO:" is ever issued.

My Reply-to mailbox resolves. (MX: 10 kd6lvw.ampr.org. and 20 snarked.org.) What's invalid about it?

That's because the address in the Reply-to header is NOT the sender. The SMTP envelope sender is "" - which is neither the From nor Reply-to settings (but is the "Return-Path:" header value when the message is delivered to your robo-moderator).

Thank you for manually adding the mailbox to the list.

My e-mail client doesn't generate the message. The news SERVER generates the message when it detects a moderated group posting. Mr. Kamens will be receiving a private e-mail regarding that.