MODERATORS(5)
NAME
moderators - Submission addresses for moderated groups
DESCRIPTION
When an unapproved article is posted locally to a moderated newsgroup,
it is not passed off to innd for normal handling; instead, it is sent
via e-mail to the submission address for that newsgroup.  The
submission address is determined using this configuration file.
- The file pathetc/moderators is a list of associations between
uwildmat(3) patterns matching newsgroups and the submission address for
those newsgroups.  Blank lines and lines starting with a number sign
 ("#") are ignored. All other lines should consist of two fields
 separated by a colon:
- <pattern>:<address>
- The first field is a uwildmat(3) pattern matching the group or groups
to which this line applies.  The first matching line is used, so more
 specific patterns should be listed before general patterns.
- The second field, the submission address, should be a simple e-mail
 address with one exception: at most one %s may occur anywhere in the
 address. If present, it will be replaced by the name of the newsgroup, with all periods in the name changed to dashes ("-"). If there is a
 literal "%" in the submission address, it must be written as "%%", even if not followed by an "s".
- With the %s syntax, periods are converted to dashes for historical
 reasons, from back in the days when periods in the local part of
 addresses were not always handled correctly. It's probably no longer
 necessary, but so much now depends on it that it can't be easily
 changed.
- It's intended that the sample moderators file included in the INN
distribution always be sufficient for all world-wide newsgroups.  The
 hosts behind moderators.isc.org have graciously volunteered to handle
 forwarding tasks for all world-wide newsgroups so that individual sites don't have to keep track of the submission addresses for moderated
 groups. The forwarding database used by moderators.isc.org is
 coordinated by <moderators-request@isc.org>; if you know of a worldwide newsgroup hierarchy that is not correctly handled by
 moderators.isc.org, please send the details to that address.
- Given that, the only thing you should have to add to the sample file
 under normal circumstances are the forwarding addresses for local or
 limited-distribution moderated groups.
- If this file doesn't exist, or if a post is made to a moderated group
 that has no matching entry in this file, nnrpd falls back on the value of moderatormailer set in inn.conf and, failing that, rejects the post.
EXAMPLES
- Here is a sample file:
- example.important:announce@example.com
 example.*:%s@smtp.example.com
 *:%s@moderators.isc.org
- Using the above file, postings to the moderated newsgroup in the left
 column below will be sent to the address shown in the right column
 below:
 example.important announce@example.com
 example.x-announce example-x-announce@smtp.example.com
 alt.dev.null alt-dev-null@moderators.isc.org
- Note that periods are changed to dashes and dashes are left alone with
the %s syntax, so two moderated newsgroups whose names differ only by
 changing a period to a dash would go to the same address. Such
 newsgroup pairs should therefore not be created.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  Rewritten
in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.
$Id: moderators.pod 8830 2009-11-29 16:49:59Z iulius $