From: don-aitken@freeuk.com 
  
 On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 20:52:29 -0600, "Vanguard" 
  wrote: 
  
 >"Don Aitken"  wrote in message 
 >news:mmsg22l86gtjan79ha1pule37linm1iboj@4ax.com... 
  
 >> news.groups is not moderated. You can discover whether a group is 
 >> moderated by looking at the headers of *any* post in the group. 
 > 
 >Oops, wrong group name.  Meant to say news.newusers.questions.  The 
 >Approve header shows up in those allowed posts.  That reverts back to 
 >the visitor knowing about the header, thinking of looking for it, and 
 >thus having to *discover* the group is moderated rather than being 
 >obvious in the name.  Guess there is a lot of resistance in impetus in 
 >changing a group's name. 
 > 
 It's not so much a matter of "resistance" as technical constraints. 
 You can't change the name of a group - all you can do is issue control 
 messages to create groups or remove them. If you have to change a 
 name, the procedure goes something like this: 
  
 1. Issue the creation message for the new group. 
 2. Hassle the users of the old group to move over to the new group. 
 3. Issue the remove message for the old group. 
 4. Repeat 1-3 ad lib. 
 5. Spend months or years chasing up the thousands of newsadmins all 
 over the world who haven't responded to your control messages, or got 
 the moderation status wrong. 
  
 It's not something you would do just to make the namespace look tidier 
 or save users a small amount of work. 
  
 >There must be something to eliminate the user from adding the Approve 
 >header to their own post to circumvent moderation.  I would assume 
 >(there's that word again) that it doesn't matter if a new post has the 
 >Approved header or not, and that it is only used when the moderator 
 >allows the post on *their* own NNTP server where the moderator has an 
 >account to use that NNTP server. 
 > 
 Actually, there is nothing to prevent anybody adding the Approved: 
 header to their own posts, except that the commoner newsreaders don't 
 to custom headers. However, forged approvals are regarded as a serious 
 matter, and will lose you your account with any decent NSP. 
  
 >Is there an official list of moderated groups that is updated regularly? 
 >I did a Google search but the articles that I read were dated back to 
 >1995. 
 > 
 New moderated group are not created very often, and those that are 
 almost always have "moderated" in the name. The problem is with older 
 groups, which will be in the lists you mention. 
  
 >Is the Approve header the quientessential header for determining if a 
 >group is moderated or not?  That is, can I test on just that header, or 
 >should I be looking for that in addition to some other headers?  It 
 >would be handy if that was the only header that I had to look for. 
  
 It's the only one which is *certain* to be there. 
  
 -- 
 Don Aitken 
 Mail to the From: address is not read. 
 To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com" 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)