Replied: Fri, 06 Sep 1996 17:00:36 EDT Replied: ""Paul W Schleck KD3FU" " From pschleck@oasis.novia.net Tue Sep 3 14:41:57 1996 Received: from MIT.EDU (SOUTH-STATION-ANNEX.MIT.EDU [18.72.1.2]) by bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU (8.6.13/2.3JIK) with SMTP id OAA12424; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 14:41:52 -0400 Received: from oasis.novia.net by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA28060; Tue, 3 Sep 96 14:40:41 EDT Received: (from pschleck@localhost) by oasis.novia.net (8.7.5/Novia) id NAA18582 for news-answers-request@mit.edu; Tue, 3 Sep 1996 13:40:29 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199609031840.NAA18582@oasis.novia.net> Subject: Suggestion: front-end *-answers mailboxes with checker program To: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 13:40:28 -0500 (CDT) From: "Paul W Schleck KD3FU" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25 PGP6] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for your prompt response in getting my additional FAQ part approved. The autoreply letter I got back said that your queue was several thousand messages deep (!!!). Wondering if this was an error in one of my scripts, I logged into rtfm.mit.edu to check things out (I'm a retired moderator, so I don't interfere, but I might look in from time to time :-). It seems that the overwhelming majority of submissions are originating from newsreader software (you can tell, as they use the *-answers, rather than *-answers-request, addresses), very often by accident. Furthermore, very few submitters are using your automated verification mailbox, news-answer-submit. Perhaps the way to solve both of these problems is to use the checker program as a front-end to the *-answers submission mailboxes. This will filter out a good deal of the cruft, keep it from landing in your mailboxes, and will check those articles that are actually submissions. This may be a bit cryptic and abrupt to do to the readership, but no one says you should kill yourself drowning in mail from ignorant netters, either. You can probably add an obvious sanity check that, if an article fails all of the tests that checker performs, a general reply form-letter is used instead. Of course, the *-answers-request mailboxes will still be human-read (and can serve as a last resort for submitters who can't work with the automated front-end). The point being that much less cruft mail is sent to the administrivia addresses vs. the submission addresses. What do you think? -- Paul W. Schleck pschleck@novia.net http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/ Finger pschleck@novia.net for PGP Public Key