🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <32317@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jbuck@janus.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Buck) writes:
   In article <BOB.89Nov1104315@archer.MorningStar.Com> bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) writes:
      ...setting up a moderated newsgroup requires active cooperation
      by the ["backbone"] sites on the Usenet...

   This is not true, Bob, though I'm not surprised that you didn't
   know.

Actually, I did know about it, but I forgot to mention it in my
article.  I now view that brief chunk of history as an administrative
curiosity and a period of learning and growing pains, and it has
mercifully migrated out of my immediate consciousness.

In the days of the nascent GNU-net, when there were only a few sites
exchanging ",gnu," and all were directly connected to the gateway
machine, this was the way we did it (lines in each mailpaths file).
It was quite convenient while making sure the gateways worked, with a
relatively-limited audience (only maybe a few thousand users :-) to
complain when I broke things.  This golden age lasted about three
days.

However, it quickly became apparent that new sites weren't going to be
consistent in adding that line to their mailpaths.  News distributions
spread by word-of-mouth, and there were growing pockets of gnu.*
connectivity that simply hadn't heard that they should do that.

In the interests of pragmatic expediency, and relieving myself of a
monthly nagging reminder posting to encourage all the new sites to
make sure their mailpaths lines were set up correctly, we decided to
ask the Usenet "backbone" sites to help us out.  They kindly did so,
to the credit of that much-maligned former organization.  Things have
flowed smoothly since then, and I haven't been eager to mess with it.

   The maintainance is centralized on gnu-gateway, where you can add
   and delete moderated groups at will, and participating site
   administrators need only add one line, one time, to their
   mailpaths.  This method also has the side benefit of helping to
   make clear to people that the gnu-net has separate administration.

Yes, those are definite benefits.  But even that "one time" part
seemed difficult to achieve.  News administrators are so accustomed to
only futzing their sys file that the linear increase in complexity and
workload was a problem.

   So, you didn't need the backbone to add a gnu-announce alias, and
   Brian didn't need the backbone to add alt-gourmand.  The software
   does the job; let's use it.

This scheme showed signs of not working well early on.  That's not to
say that it couldn't work now, just that it would be a lot of work to
get all the sites exchanging gnu.* to switch over.  Yes, it would
re-emphasize the separateness of gnu.* to each new site that joins,
and that would be a very good thing.  I just fear the collective
administrative overhead.  Once the maintenance were centralized on a
single machine things would be (relatively) rosy, but the transition
period would be rocky.

The decision comes down to what aspect is more easily scalable.
Either some work at each site carrying gnu.* and some minor work at
the gateway site, or some work at each site on the Usenet "backbone".
Of course, the costs of scaling are not only person-hours, but the
cost of conflict, a monthly nag-o-gram, etc.

But then, I'm not coddling the gateways any more, and Jordan offered
to do the moderation, so what am I complaining about? :-)