🚀 go-pugleaf

edis@eta.pha.jhu.edu (Taner Edis) wrote:

>>       For the convenience of some present subscribers, and extending
>>the practical accessibility of the list SKEPTIC, a uni-directional
>>gateway to Usenet is proposed.

I don't see a clear need for yet another newsgroup on the same topic.
Why not ask sci.skeptic if that group would be willing to receive
articles "posted" from the SKEPTIC mailing list?  Here's an example
of another alternative:

ECOLOG-L was made moderated due to constant public complaints about
constant public complaints, which had created a vicious virtual loop.
The list is gated to sci.bio.ecology, thus all articles sent by
subscribers and from the newsgroup are (potentially) seen by everyone,
but the list owner may suppress some articles from appearing at all
and some articles may appear only on the newsgroup.  As I understand
it, only "subscribe me" requests have been squelched so far, since 
the complaint loop broke.


Jim McIntosh  <jim@american.edu> wrote:

>I do not understand uni-directional gateways.  I had even considered
>removing mention of them from the Gateway Policy post.  None of the 280+
>gateways we operate now are uni-directional.

What about sci.answers and SCIFAQ-L?  At present, sci.answers is a 
subscriber, via NETNEWS@AUVM, with the NOMAIL option set, so no mail
goes from the list to the newsgroup.

Aren't there a few mailing lists that are set PRIVATE, so only
subscribers' articles are distributed?  Articles sent to these
lists via Usenet newsgroups may be refused if the original sender
is not a subscriber, thus to be seen on the mailing list side, the
sender must subscribe to the mailing list, even though posting to
a newsgroup.  Such subscribers may have the NOMAIL option set for
themselves, to avoid getting mail from the list in addition to
reading the newsgroup.


>My primary concern with unidirectional gateways is that no one on the
>Usenet side expects them.

No one expects them on the mailing list end either.  This is all a
kludge, but then I know of some mighty snarled groups of mailing
lists that redistribute mail from one to the other in ways that very
few participants ever realize.  And there are some newsgroup
re-direction messes too, unfortunately.

I think such elaborate setups are probably a mistake, but that
doesn't mean they should be disallowed.  It is important in
such cases that the setup be explained regularly, preferably
in a FAQ.

-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA