From: Bernie Cosell (bernie@fantasyfarm.com)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 16:22:50 CDT
On 1 Aug 2002, at 13:22, Jay Denebeim wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>
> > I'm not a moderator (was from about 88-92) so I have a question about
> > moderator platforms. Is it safe to assume that the majority of moderators
> > use either a UNIX-like o/s or Windows? It looks like it's time to
> > generate a new moderator tool, are these platforms the majority target?
>
> *A* new moderator tool? I guess you're not aware how stuff is moderated.
> There's almost as many tools as there are moderated newsgroups. Although
> I'm pretty sure a good many of them use Agent which allows them to edit
> the headers and then inject the news. I don't know how well this
> encapsulation stuff is going to work for them.
Actually, the difficulties in using Agent to moderate with encapsulated
sumbissions are VERY deep; I'm not convinced it will be possible at all.
I use Agent to moderate and in the wake of this discussion I did some
hacking around, and Agent's machinery for handling text/RFC822 MIME
sections [it seemed like the most sensible thing to test with! :o)] is
truly pitiful. It displays the message in-line, with NO facilities that
I could find to deal with the encapsulated message separately at all
This in contrast to its handling of some other types of MIME sections
which at least give you the option of storing the section to a file. Of
course, I suspect that if the type were 'text/news-submission', Agent
wouldn't know what to do with it,and so for *THAT* I _would_ be able to
save it. but that doesn't help much --- so now I have the un-
encapsulated message on my HD [and I"ve already expended a fair number of
'clicks' on handling this one submission]....
But, alas, you then founder on the next level of infelicity in the brave-
new-usenet-world -- Agent really only handles "one thing" now, and it is
kind of blurry whether it is a news message or an email message [e.g.,
you can only import [email] messages and with the current setup, that's
just fine [you import the message, and then, since it has a Newsgroups:
header, when you do "Post new copy of message" it actually leaps the
chasm from email to news]; in the new setup, apps like Agent would need
*TWO* types of import mechanisms -- one for importing email messages the
other for importing news articles.
If news breaks with 2822 compatibility, I'm not sure what "two-in-one"
clients like Agent will do, *at*all*, much less whether those apps will
continue to be useable for moderation, since they'll have to have a LOT
of their internals changed [for example, if I have a folder and I file
both email and usenet message in the folder, the app will have to be
careful to keep track of which is which; not difficult but just a layer
of detail not currently needed]. This is not to say that any of this
isn't doable, it will just mean, IMO, a fair bit of work for the folks
trying to support the 2-in-1 apps (not even worrying about moderation
issues now). Indeed, I wonder whether some of the big-gorillas in the
jungle [like MS/OE and to some extent Forte/Agent] will take kindly to
news and email no longer using the same underlying format and be willing
to DO the internal mickeymousing it'll take to do it 'right'...
In any event, barring a *HUGE* [and unlikely] change in the way Agent
works, I think it will not be useable to moderate and so folk like me
will have to investigate other software for moderation. NB: this is
*NOT* a big deal. I mostly use Agent because I'm familiar with it and
I'm too lazy to go investigate using something different to moderate with
[even if it would in the end be a lot more efficient for me!.. I know I
know.. shortsighted laziness]. Having something like this give me a kick
in the pants to get some new software isn't the end of the world. If all
the servers can change AND all the client-vendors can change, so can
I..:o)
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--