The various *.answers-related maintenance tasks have gotten so huge that
nobody can just "do the weekly maintenance" any more.  I've broken the
standard maintenance tasks into more-or-less independent chunks.  In addition,
most of the larger and more daunting tasks can be partially done by one
moderator on one day, and finished by another moderator the next day... or
the next week.  The important thing is that tasks don't get forgotten
in the face of pressure from the queue.

Anything involving access to the archives can only be done on RTFM; I haven't
explicitly noted this.

I've put each task in the following format:
Task:  A short name for the task; I intend this to cross-reference into a
        maintenance checklist eventually.
Description:  A short meaningful description of the task.
How:  Brief instructions, and/or a pointer to not-so-brief instructions.
Target Frequency:  How often we'd like to see this done, in theory.
Frequency:  How often we should try to get this done, in reality.
Time:  The wall-clock time it takes to do this, on average load.
Effort:  How much of the wall-clock time takes human attention.
Do Partly:  Guidelines for doing only part of the task.


The tasks are listed in no particular order.  (Feel free to put them
in order of importance...  for now, I'm just trying to get them all
*listed*.) 

Task:  Re-order *.answers inbox
Description: re-sequence the queue inbox, in chron order
How:  Run the command 'sortm +$NADIR/Mail/inbox' to sort the messages
        by date, followed by 'folder +$NADIR/Mail/inbox -pack' to
        renumber them consecutively starting from 1.  (These are MH
        commands which work on any mail folder.)
Target Frequency:  Whenever a lot of messages have been re-queued, or whenever
        the numbers threaten to go into 4 digits.
Frequency:  As needed
Time:  About 5 minutes depending on size of queue and load
Effort:  Minimal
Do Partly:  Okay to just sort or just pack.

Task: Pack *.answers mail archive
Description:  Archive and compress the archived incoming and outgoing mail.
How:  See $NADIR/guide
Target Frequency:  Weekly
Frequency:  monthly?
Time:  Strongly dependent on how many messages are in the archive.
        Can take a couple of hours, not all interactive.
Effort:  Time to delete unnecessary information from files the script
        can't interpret, plus standard file-manipulation stuff.  Say,
        about 1/2 of the total time required.
Do Partly:  No disaster, as long as the original messages remain, but
        it's too complicated a process to split among several people
        easily. 

Task:  Pack faq-maintainers archive
Description: Archive and compress faq-maintainers mail, and make it available
        for anonymous FTP.  (faq-maintainers-announce, too.)
How:  See $NADIR/guide .  Packed files in the FTP archive are split by
        month, even if there aren't 500 kB of messages in a given month. 
Target Frequency:  Weekly
Frequency: Monthly
Time:  Depends on how many messages are in the archive.  Usually less
        than an hour.
Effort:  Standard file-manipulation stuff.  About 4/5 of the total
        time required. 
Do Partly:  No disaster, but it's too involved a process to split
        among several people.

Task:  Automated 90-day zap
Description:  Run the script that culls 90-day-old postings from the archive,
        and examine the output.
How:  See $PPDIR/src/cleanup-steps, or ~buglady/bin/scrub-old
Target Frequency:  Weekly
Frequency:  Every few months (should be much more often)
Time:  An hour or more, depending on system load and number of files.
Effort:  5 to 10 minutes to look over the output.
Do Partly:  Not a good idea, but no tragedy if interrupted.

Task:  Manual 90-day zap
Description:  Examine files under /ftp/pub/usenet-by-*/*.answers, which are
        immune to the automated zap.  
How:  See $NADIR/cleanup-steps
Target Frequency:  Weekly
Frequency:  Quarterly or semi-annually for a full cycle
Time:  Ten minutes per file.
Effort:  Ten minutes per file.
Do Partly:  Every little bit helps, as long as it get logged in 
        $NADIR/data/list.  Useful to keep a 'bookmark' so that each person
        who does this picks up where the last one left off.

Task:  Automated archive sweep
Description:  Run the script that culls posts matching the same wildcarded
        Single-Subject line, and examine the output.
How:  See $NADIR/src/cleanup-steps
Target Frequency:  Weekly
Frequency:  Every few months (should be much more often)
Time:  An hour or more to run the script; plus acting on output.
Effort:  Ten minutes (or longer to deal with oddities in the output.)
Do Partly:  Not very useful, but no tragedy if interrupted.

Task:  Check rkive failures
Description:  Handle files in /usr/spool/FAQ_archiver/problems that have
        failed proper archiving.  (Also reported by nightly) 
How:  See the relevant doc (probably $NADIR/guide)
Target Frequency:  Every other day
Frequency:  Every few months (should be much more often)
Time:  A few minutes per file.
Effort:  A few minutes per file.
Do Partly:  Deal with one file at a time; make sure stuff gets logged.

Task:  ?
Description:  ?
How:  ?
Target Frequency:  ?
Frequency:  ?
Time:  ?
Effort:  ?
Do Partly:  ?