[Mailman-Developers] Hack to support moderated newsgroups

[Barry A. Warsaw]

Hi folks,

I need to get comp.lang.python.announce -- a moderated newsgroup --
back online.  So I've worked up a hack and uploaded it to SourceForge
as patch # 101270.  This allows the list admins to serve as newsgroup
moderators.  Here's the basic approach:

Besides your normal news<->mail gateway list, you also create a list
just for the moderators.  This second list will have no members.  It
will be a one-way list, gatwaying only from mail->news and it will be
used for approval purposes only.  You set your moderator address to
the posting address for the list.

The patch hacks GatewayManager.py to add a new config variable, which
basically toggles whether the gated newsgroup is moderated or not.  If
so, the Hold.py module will hold every message posted to the list (if
it's not held via some other criteria, it'll get held with a
ModeratedNewsgroup exception).

Now the admins can use the admindb page to approve or discard the
messages as normal.  ToUsenet.py has been hacked to add an Approved:
message to any that have been explicitly approved.  That's the minimal
needed to tell the netnews software that the message should get
posted.

This stuff is a hack, which is why I'm not folding it into the distro
(well, that and Mailman 2.0 is overdue -- I've been concentrating on
getting Python 2.0 ready for release).  I'd be interested in any
feedback you might have.  I've done some preliminary testing with
c.l.py.a and I think this'll work.

-Barry