From: ewilts@galaxy.gov.bc.ca (Ed Wilts)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Bogus moderated groups (was Re: changing the moderator...)
Date: 13 Aug 92 15:26:19 GMT
Reply-To: EWILTS@GALAXY.GOV.BC.CA
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: BC Systems Corporation

In article <2288@aegis.or.jp>, davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:
> elle@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher) writes:
> 
>>lvirden@cas.org (Larry W. Virden) presents a long list of moderated groups
>> on his system with no traffic:
>>>comp.graphics.digest ... comp.society.women ... soc.human-nets
> 
>>All rmgrouped over a year ago.
> 
>>Others:  comp.ai.digest was rmgrouped some time ago; there's no such
>>group as "comp.dcom.telecom.digest"; comp.sys.sun was rmgrouped after
>>the comp.sys.sun.* reorg; rec.arts.sf-reviews was rmgrouped when it
>>was replaced by .sf.reviews.
> 
>>I don't mean to be especially rude, Larry, but if you can't keep up
>>with rmgroup messages (or read news.announce.newgroups, which also
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>announces reorgs and removals), you might consider running a
>>checkgroups script from time to time.
> 
> I don't mean to be especially stupid, but first, how does one find
> out what the legal newsgroups are? And second how does one determine
> what is a legal {rm|ad}group control message? 

As pointed out above, read news.announce.newgroups.  There are monthly
checkgroups posting that contains all the valid newsgroups.  You'll most likely
want to process the one with the inet groups.  When the checkgroups is
processed, you will have all the groups you are supposed to have, have deleted
the bogus ones, and have valid descriptions for all the valid groups.

> Maybe it's only here in Japan, but when I started getting news a
> year or so ago I got lots of control messages that tell me to do
> this or tell me to do that, and then soon after I did it, all kinds
> of weird things would happen like hundreds of articles going to junk,
> etc. So my policy has been to just adgroups as I can't figure out
> what is a real control message and what is bogus. 

IMHO, Your policy is wrong.  I regularly see articles going to junk because
they are posted to invalid groups and I expect this to continue until all the
news administrators work with valid newsgroups.  Policies such as yours is
encouraging users to post to bogus groups.  Policies such as mine will prevent
your users postings from being read.  It is to your benefit to work with a
valid set of newsgroups.  The number of really useful articles posted to bogus
newsgroups is probably quite small anyway.

You should be wary and not automatically process all control messages either. 
There are occasional leaks of rmgroup and newgroup messages that are invalid.
If you follow news.announce.newgroups, and I believe you should, you will soon
learn to recognize the bogus control messages and ignore those.

The first time you run a checkgroups message through, your users may complain
about groups suddenly going away.  It's probably polite to warn them first that
you plan on operating a valid news host and that invalid groups will not be
created.

> I also have an some kind of control something or other comes in from
> time to time and wipes out half the comments in /usr/lib/news/newsgroups 
> so I find it necessary to keep a backup copy so I can restore it....
> 
> Any ideas?

If by comments you mean the newsgroups descriptions, then the checkgroups
posting will put them back.

> Dave McLane 
> JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
> Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087
> 
-- 

Ed Wilts, BC Systems Corp., 4000 Seymour Place, Victoria, B.C., Canada, V8X 4S8
EWilts@Galaxy.Gov.BC.CA   |   Ed.Wilts@BCSystems.Gov.BC.CA   |   (604) 389-3430
Newsgroups: news.groups