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From: Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.ukNOSPAMPLEASE>
Newsgroups: news.groups.proposals,news.groups
Subject: Re: MODERATOR (NOT MODERATORS?) FOUND for rec.photo.moderated, comp.std.announce, comp.newprod, and comp.simulation
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:06:02 EDT
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In article <684e1bb7@news.ausics.net>, not@telling.you.invalid says...
> 
> In news.groups.proposals Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.uknospamplease> wrote:
> > As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
> > Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still
> > rather elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is
> > considerably easier to set up than the other extant moderation
> > software, STUMP. The development version now has support for secure
> > POP and SMTP connections, making it more likely to work with modern
> > email providers.
> > 
> > The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is
> > some sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single
> > point of failure just like Robomod was.
> 
> If I understand correctly, the moderation software just needs to
> read mail from the newsgroup's submission email inbox and post
> approved messages to a willing NNTP server. In that case you could
> easily have instances of the same moderation platform running in
> different places, similar to front-end websites like Invidious. If
> one dies, moderators could make an account on another identical
> instance and keep going. If it's open-source and well written in a
> long-term stable language (I wouldn't choose Python on that basis)
> then it shouldn't need much maintenance even if the original author
> departs.

Ah yes, Python. "Let's remove nntplib from the standard library, nobody 
uses that any more". *sigh*

I like the idea of an open-source moderation platform. We have 
STUMP/WebSTUMP, but it's a pain to set up.

We'd still need volunteers to run instances of the platform, but maybe 
that way we'd only need a handful of technically competent people to 
provide moderation services to people who are willing to do moderation 
work but don't have the skills to set up their own platform.

> As, I gather, a closed-source service, Robomod effectively opted in
> to being a single point of failure, but I think that approach could
> be done much more flexibly.
> 
> The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the
> NNTP servers willing to accept postings from these distributed
> neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion
> that some (most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting
> approved articles through them, or require personal requests to
> allow it. If all the instances are pointing to the same willing
> NNTP server then it becomes another single point of failure.
> Ideally they'd all be pointing to different NNTP servers (_ideally_
> many instances would be run by the same people who run those NNTP
> servers).

Panix and Eternal September are willing to allow posting of approved 
articles, if the user can show they have a legit reason. If anyone knows 
of other NNTP providers that will grant this permission, please let us 
know, it's good to have more options we can recommend to potential 
moderators.

Rayner