usefor-article-08 August 2002

8.7.  Duties of a Moderator

   A Moderator receives news articles by email, decides whether to
   accept them and, if so, either injects them into the news stream or
   forwards them to further moderators.

   A moderator processes an article, as submitted to any newsgroup that
   he moderates, as follows:

   1. He decides, on the basis of whatever moderation policy applies to
      his group, whether to accept or reject the article. He MAY do this
      manually, or else partially or wholly with the aid of appropriate
      software for whose operation he is then responsible. He MAY modify
      the article if that is in accordance with the applicable
      moderation policy (and in particular he MAY remove redundant
      headers and add Comments and other informational headers). He MAY
      inform the poster as to whether the article has been accepted or
      rejected.

      If the article is rejected, then it fails for all the newsgroups
      for which it was intended (in particular the moderator SHOULD NOT
      resubmit the article, with a reduced Newsgroups-header, to any
      remaining groups, especially if this will break any authentication
      checks present in the article). If the article is accepted, the
      moderator proceeds with the following steps.

   2. The Date-header SHOULD be retained, except that if it is stale
      (5.1) for reasons understood by the moderator (e.g. delays in the
      moderation process) he MAY substitute the current date (but must
      then take responsibility for any loops that ensue). Any variant
      headers (4.2.5.3) MUST be removed, except that a Path-header MAY
      be truncated to only its pre-injection region (5.6.3).  Any
      Injector-Info-header (6.19) or Complaints-To-header (6.20) MUST be
      removed.

   3. He adds an Approved-header (6.14) containing a mailbox identifying
      himself (or, if the article already contains an Approved-header
      from another moderator, he adds that identifying information to
      it). He MAY also include that Approved-header within some digital
      signature scheme (see 7.1).
   4. If the Newsgroups-header contains further moderated newsgroups for
      which approval has not already been given, he forwards the article
      to the moderator of the leftmost such group (which, if this
      standard has been followed correctly, will always be the group
      immediately to the right of the group(s) for which he is
      responsible). However, he MUST NOT alter the order in which the
      newsgroups are listed in the Newsgroups-header.

   5. Otherwise, he causes the article to be injected, having first
      decoded any encoded newsgroup-name (5.5.2), unless his injecting
      agent offers that service (8.2.2), and having observed all the
      duties of a posting agent (8.5).

        NOTE: This standard does not prescribe how the moderator or
        moderation policy for each newsgroup is established; rather it
        assumes that whatever agencies are responsible for the relevant
        network or hierarchy (1.1) will have made appropriate
        arrangements in that regard.

   Articles will be received by the moderator either encapsulated as an
   object of Content-Type application/news-transmission (8.2.2) (or
   possibly encapsulated but without an explicit Content-Type-header),
   or else directly as an email already containing all the headers
   appropriate for a Netnews article (see 8.2.2) in which case he needs
   to be aware of the Duties of an Incoming Gateway (8.8.2) (and, in
   particular, he SHOULD adopt the Message-ID- and Date-headers of the
   email message, though he SHOULD NOT add any Sender-header).
   Moderators SHOULD be prepared to accept articles in either format.

--- ../usefor-article-07/Duties_of_a_Moderator.out          May 2002
+++ ../usefor-article-08/Duties_of_a_Moderator.out          August 2002
@@ -32,12 +32,12 @@
       be truncated to only its pre-injection region (5.6.3).  Any
       Injector-Info-header (6.19) or Complaints-To-header (6.20) MUST be
       removed.
+
    3. He adds an Approved-header (6.14) containing a mailbox identifying
       himself (or, if the article already contains an Approved-header
       from another moderator, he adds that identifying information to
       it). He MAY also include that Approved-header within some digital
       signature scheme (see 7.1).
-
    4. If the Newsgroups-header contains further moderated newsgroups for
       which approval has not already been given, he forwards the article
       to the moderator of the leftmost such group (which, if this
@@ -47,7 +47,9 @@
       newsgroups are listed in the Newsgroups-header.
 
    5. Otherwise, he causes the article to be injected, having first
-      observed all the duties of a posting agent (8.5).
+      decoded any encoded newsgroup-name (5.5.2), unless his injecting
+      agent offers that service (8.2.2), and having observed all the
+      duties of a posting agent (8.5).
 
         NOTE: This standard does not prescribe how the moderator or
         moderation policy for each newsgroup is established; rather it
@@ -55,18 +57,13 @@
         network or hierarchy (1.1) will have made appropriate
         arrangements in that regard.
 
-   It SHOULD be the case that articles will be received by the moderator
-   encapsulated as an object of Content-Type application/news-
-   transmission (8.2.2), or possibly encapsulated but without an
-   explicit Content-Type-header. In such a case, the complete article is
-   immediately available for processing by the moderator.
-
-   However, prior to the introduction of this standard, it was more
-   common for injecting agents to transform proto-articles into email
-   messages, mixing the Netnews headers with the Email headers.
-   Moderators SHOULD therefore be prepared to accept submission in this
-   format, although they need then to be aware of the Duties of an
-   Incoming Gateway (8.8.2) (and, in particular, they SHOULD adopt the
-   Message-ID- and Date-headers of the email message, though they SHOULD
-   NOT add any Sender-header).
+   Articles will be received by the moderator either encapsulated as an
+   object of Content-Type application/news-transmission (8.2.2) (or
+   possibly encapsulated but without an explicit Content-Type-header),
+   or else directly as an email already containing all the headers
+   appropriate for a Netnews article (see 8.2.2) in which case he needs
+   to be aware of the Duties of an Incoming Gateway (8.8.2) (and, in
+   particular, he SHOULD adopt the Message-ID- and Date-headers of the
+   email message, though he SHOULD NOT add any Sender-header).
+   Moderators SHOULD be prepared to accept articles in either format.