Proposal: Disconnect comp.lang.python from python-list

[Richard Damon]

On 5/5/21 10:44 PM, Jon Ribbens via Python-list wrote:
> On 2021-05-06, Richard Damon <Richard at Damon-Family.org> wrote:
>> On 5/5/21 9:40 PM, Jon Ribbens via Python-list wrote:
>>> On 2021-05-06, Paul Bryan <pbryan at anode.ca> wrote:
>>>> What's involved in moderating c.l.p? Would there be volunteers willing
>>>> to do so?
>>> Nothing at all is involved, apart from changing the status of the group.
>>> The moderation would be done by the same people, in the same way, as the
>>> moderation of the list is done now. They wouldn't need to do any work
>>> they don't already do.
>> As someone with a long usenet background, converting the existing group
>> to moderated would be practically impossible. It just isn't done. It
>> would need to be a new group created with the .moderated tag. The
>> problem is that some servers won't change and getting things mixed like
>> that just creates propagation problems, so it just isn't done.
> As someone with a longer usenet background, it can be done, and there
> isn't any great reason not to do so in this case. But I did already
> suggest creating a new moderated group instead if people feel that's
> better.

Not so sure you are longer than me, I started on usenet is the late 80s
with dial up.

Yes, there have been a few successful conversions, but it is a lot of
work, and there may be too many servers that don't really care that
might get it wrong (google groups is one that could easily not care if
they break things, they have already broken comp.lang.c++

>
>> Basically, some machine would need to be designated to get all the
>> submissions to the group, emailed to it, and people would need to log
>> into the email account on that computer to approve all the posts, or a
>> robot could perhaps be setup to auto-approve most based on some rules.
> Are you unaware that the group is already gatewayed to a moderated
> mailing list for which all of that work is already done? The only
> difference is that currently that good work is then wasted and thrown
> away from the point of view of the group participants.

The big difference is that the mailing list directly gets its email from
the senders, and that was totally over SMTP so some From: verification
is possible, thus it make sense to let email addresses be validated for
whitelisting. Submissions from the moderated group have lost all
traceability to the original sender when it get forwarded via the NNTP
transportation link, so such a white list might not be as viable, and on
usenet many people intentionally post without valid From addresses, so a
LOT more messages will end up in the moderation queue, so more work for
the moderators.

-- 
Richard Damon