A search of the archives on this subject might not give the correct answers
since my posts from this July relating my experiences with switching
gateways from American University to Newsguy don't seem to be in the
archives.  I had my doubts at the time that the posts were being
distributed as well since I received error messages from LSOFT.COM that the
message had to be reposted.

Since Jim MacIntosh left American University there has been a very slowly
evolving admission from the news and system admins there that American
University is slowly getting rid of the gatewaying service.  They will, in
fact, process your requests, but only after weeks of no response.  The
person I've sort of corresponded with is Peter M. O'Donnell
<[log in to unmask]> who seems to be in charge of the news systems.
Messages to the department head, [log in to unmask], will be responded to
quickly, but only with the information that it has been forwarded to
Herschel Browne <[log in to unmask]>, systems admin, where it will either
be forwarded to Peter O'Donnell, or it will fall into a black hole.  It's
hard to tell which because each step will encountered weeks of no response.
Most likely, this is all by design.

However, last month AU finally severed all ties, and the gateway set up for
us by Mike D'Alessandro <[log in to unmask]> at Newsguy has been working
flawlessly for several months now.  Before AU finally got around to
removing our newsgroup I just had to deal with duplicates being sent to me
for approval.  If posting to your list is subscriber only then newsgroup
posts will be sent to you for approval, unless the poster's address is
subscribed.  The only problem still remaining is the transfer of admin
authority for the bit.listserv.* newsgroups.  AU indicated last month that
they wanted to watch for awhile to be sure that things were working right
at Newsguy before transferring authority changing, or terminating
newsgroups.  I don't know what would happen if you tried to create a
newsgroup in that hierarchy without AU.

Mike Holloway
[log in to unmask]