I've not understood moderator's work

[Paul Tomblin]

Quoting antonio caravaggio (acmoz at hotmail.com):
> >Absolutely nothing.  There is no verification on Approved headers at all -
> >they only have to be non-blank.  Take a look at groups like alt.hackers 
> 
> ??? Are you saying that anyone can post anything he wants on a moderated 
> group simply adding an Approved header? (Of course the moderator is able to 

That's exactly what I am saying.

> remove unapproved article from server but only after its pubblication).
> That' s means moderated and unmoderated groups are quite the same thing!

Not really.  By convention, if somebody forges a post to a moderated group,
his post will be cancelled and a complaint (or a hundred) will be lodged with
his ISP.  If he keeps doing it, and his ISP doesn't do anything, they face
UDP.

> The only method to make a REALLY moderated group is to configure a group 
> with no post right (for anyone) and to post an article it should be sent to 
> moderator who decide (or not) to put it on the group (piping the mail to | 
> inews -a someone at somewhere.somedomain)?

There is no way to do this with Usenet news as it's currently defined, unless
you don't feed it anywhere.  Once you start feeding it and accepting feeds,
you have no control whether the other sites mark that group as 'm', 'n', or
'x'.  And it has to be 'm' on your site, or inews -a won't work for you, so
anybody who has post access on your site can forge an approval.

Usenet 2 is an attempt to control stuff like this by making very explicit what
it is to be a conforming site, and to refuse news feeds from non-conforming
sites.  In order to be conforming, you have to have the newsgroups set up
correctly, not allow your lusers to forge approvals, etc.

Lots of other proposals have been floated, such as having PGP verification of
moderator approvals and cancel messages, but nothing has gotten over the
"backwards compatibility" hurdle.

Usenet was designed for a time when people trusted each other, and I don't
think the designers ever anticipated a time when any drooling moron with 5
hours pay to waste could buy a computer and post to Usenet.

-- 
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
SETI at Home:  Finally a *good* way to impress Jodie Foster
http://www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/