At 5:56 AM -0700 on 4/24/98, Gil Emery Jr wrote:


> >As soneone who has been dealing with a usenet gateway for a number of
> >years, I must ask: are you REALLY certain you want this gateway?
> >You may live to regret it, and your list may die from it, and you may
> >be sued because of it.  You really want a uselessnet gateway?

and

> I am at the point as well for my fire-l list, to shut it down--- it adds a
> tremoundous amount of work  (like 10-30 posts a night) of Porn and other
> miscreant postings that really dont belong out there..


I use to have trouble due to the gateway, and I remember the previous
listowner thought of closing it down occasionally.  Then I changed the
moderation on both the list and the newsgroup and most of these problems
went away.  Every weekend I get some spam (2-4) and that is about it.

The first thing I did was make the newsgroup a moderated newsgroup.  And I
set the moderator's address to be the address of the list itself.  Now,
whenever anyone posts an article to the newsgroup, it doesn't automatically
get distributed by the list like it used to.  In this way I am using the
moderation features of the listserv software to moderate the newsgroup.

My list is set up with:
        *  Send= Editor
        *  Default-options=editor

So anyone who is subscribed to the list can post without problem, even if
they post via the newsgroup.  People who participate often via the
newsgroup I add to the list, and set their subscriptions nomail.

I only have to approve 3-6 posts a day - a very easy load compared to the
previous listowner.  I get the occasional net.kook, but they tend not to
stick around.  Especially since they never figure out that it is possible
for them to get around the moderation of the newsgroup.

I don't get much spam, and what I do get isn't much trouble - it is usually
easy to detect by the subject line, and since the From: addresses are
_never_ subscribed to the list, they need me to approve them to get
distributed.  I therefor have a spam free list.



Mark

--
Mark Drake   [log in to unmask]