Moderating a Discussion Group

You can assign managers and users to moderate discussion groups. Moderators can control the amount of traffic and the message count a discussion group receives by approving messages or filtering out unwanted material.

A discussion group moderator

• Reviews submitted messages
• Specifies which messages can be posted
• Sends e-mail to the authors of the denied messages
• Forwards accepted messages to the discussion group
• Combines messages and articles to create a digest that gets posted periodically

When an article is posted to a moderated discussion group, the server looks for the header Approved: moderatoraddress. If the address in the header matches the moderator's address for the discussion group, the message is added to the spool. If the address does not match the moderator's address, the message is sent by e-mail to the moderator.

Setting Up Moderating

If you decide that you want a discussion group moderated, you need to

• Modify the discussion group properties
• Provide the moderator with the necessary information

Modifying the Discussion Group Properties

1. From the General Administration page, click the News Server server name button > Discussion Groups > Manage Discussion Groups > OK.

2. Select the discussion group that you want moderated.

3. Click General Properties.

4. Under Advanced Options, select the Moderate Discussion Group.

5. In the Send Postings Via E-Mail To field, type the moderator's address.

6. Click Submit.

Providing the Moderator with the Necessary Information

You need to provide the moderator with the following:

• A copy of the NSNEWS.CONF file, in NOVONYX]SUITESPOT\NEWS-SERVERNAME\CONFIG
• A copy of the INEWS program, in NOVONXY\SUITESPOT\BIN\NEWS\BIN

  The INEWS program is the News Server moderating program. (INEWS is a client utility.) The INEWS program shipped with the News Server must run on Windows* NT*, and the News Server must run on NetWare^®.

• The Moderators Handbook

  This describes moderator formats used to post articles and common practices of moderators

You should also provide the following steps to the moderator:

1. From the client NT console, set the NS_NEWSCONF environment variable in the NSNEWS.CONF file to the full pathname of the NSNEWS.CONF file.

2. When you receive a message for approval, save the message to any file, and edit the message to receive the moderator header information.

3. To approve the article, run the inews command on the article from the NT console, then forward the article to the discussion group.

   For example, in the command

   inews -h -a moderuser@news.royal.com filename_article

   the -h option indicates that the file contains headers, and the -a option indicates that the file is approved.

4. To reject the article, do not forward the message to the discussion group.

5. If you reject the article, send an e-mail to the author, and explain why the message was rejected.

Moderating and Access Control

If access control is enabled, the following rules also apply to moderating a discussion group:

• You must grant the moderator role to the moderator.
• You must specify that the moderator use basic authentication.

  If you are requiring authentication at first connect and client authentication is the default, the moderator cannot use the INEWS program.

• The moderator must specify a username and password when running the INEWS program.

  For example:

  inews -h -a moderuser@news.royal.com -u mewing -w passwd filename_article