moderators - submission addresses for moderated newsgroups

When an unapproved article is posted locally to a moderated newsgroup, it is not passed off to innd(8) for normal handling; instead it's instead sent via e-mail to the submission address for that newsgroup. The file <pathetc in inn.conf>/moderators lists the submission addresses for moderated newsgroups. This file is used by nnrpd(8), inews(1), and any other program that uses the GetModeratorAddress() routine (see libinn(3)).

The moderators file is a list of associations between uwildmat(3) patterns matching newsgroups and the submission address for those newsgroups. Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. All other lines should consist of two fields separated by a colon.

The first field specifies the group or groups to match using uwildmat(3). The first matching line is used, so more specific patterns should occur earlier than general patterns.

The second field, the submission address, may have at most one %s anywhere in it; if present, this will be replaced by the name of the newsgroup with periods replaced by dashes. If there is a literal ``%'' in the submission address, it must be written as ``%%'' (even if not followed by an ``s'').

Here is a sample file:

example.important:announce-request@example.com example.*:%s@smtp.example.com gnu.*:%s@prep.ai.mit.edu *:%s@moderators.isc.org

Using the above file, postings to the moderated newsgroup in the left column will be sent to the address shown in the right column:

example.important announce-request@example.com example.x.announce example-x-announce@smtp.example.com gnu.emacs.sources gnu-emacs-sources@prep.ai.mit.edu comp.sources.unix comp-sources-unix@moderators.isc.org

Periods are converted to dashes for historical reasons, from back in the days when periods in the local part of addresses were not always handled correctly. It's probably no longer necessary, but so much now depends on it that it can't be easily changed.

It's intended that the sample moderators file included in the INN distribution always be sufficient for all world-wide newsgroups. The hosts behind moderators.isc.org have graciously volunteered to handle forwarding tasks for all world-wide newsgroups so that individual sites don't have to keep track of the submission addresses for moderated groups. The forwarding database used by moderators.isc.org is coordinated by moderators-request@isc.org; if you know of a world-wide newsgroup hierarchy that is not correctly handled by moderators.isc.org, please send the details to that address.

Given that, the only thing you should have to add to the sample file under normal circumstances are the forwarding addresses for local or limited-distribution moderated groups.

Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.

inews(1), inn.conf(5), libinn(3), uwildmat(3).