From: G. James Berigan (usefor@war-of-the-worlds.org)
Date: Thu Nov 11 1999 - 09:18:18 CST
chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) wrote:
>"G. James Berigan" <usefor@war-of-the-worlds.org> writes:
>> BTW, shouldn't new.group be followed by optional moderation status? That
>> would also allow:
>>
>> mvgroup old.group old.group moderated
> But that effect is currently achieved by reissuing the newgroup message.
> We already agreed not to use mvgroup to do what newgroup already did (e.g.
> boosters) when we removed the optionality of the 2nd parameter to mvgroup.
Okay, but there's still the merge syntax to consider:
mvgroup old.groups.* new.group moderated
Do we issue the newgroup and hope it arrives before the mvgroup so that we
avoid the situation where, if it comes after, an non-moderated group gets
turned into a moderated group with limited success? There's something to
be said for getting it right the first time rather than correcting for
mistakes later.
Also, a server may honor multi-group mergers to a single group if the
single group didn't already exist, but would not perform a merge if it did
exist. A strange situation, but a possible policy. So if the newgroup
arrived first, a merge might not occur where it would occur before.
And issuing a booster newgroup and intentionally changing the moderated
status of a group for the first time are two different activities. The
former presumes the message reflects the status quo; the latter that this
is a definite change. It would seem mvgroup is the natural choice for
changes, leaving newgroup in its roles of creating new groups and providing
boosters.