``Making Moderation Easy'' This document describes how I think about newsgroup moderation, as well as lists software options for potential and current newsgroup moderators. It is available at http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/faq.txt Contents: Q: What is moderation and moderated newsgroups? Q: What moderation is about? Q: What personal qualities are required from moderators? Q: What technical skills are required from moderators? Q: What about team moderation? Q: What risk does moderation introduce? Q: What moderation programs do you provide? Q: What do I have to know and have to use them? Q: What services do you provide? Q: Which program/service is right for me? Q: How can you help us with installation? Q: Which newsgroups use STUMP? Q: What other moderation programs are available? @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Q: What is moderation and moderated newsgroups? A: Moderated newsgroups are newsgroups where articles are somehow scanned and accepted (or rejected) based on a certain criteria specific to the group. Moderation is the process of scanning incoming articles and processing approved and rejected articles. An excellent FAQ on newsgroup moderation has been written by Denis McKeon. Unfortunately, it is a little dated, and at times outdated, but it gives an excellent overview of newsgroup moderation process. However, unless Denis updates it, its description of software options for moderation is outdated and is not to be relied upon. http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html Q: What moderation is about? A: Moderation is about helping people talk to people. Unfortunately, in some cases many participants of online discussions feel that, unless articles are somehow filtered, their topic cannot be discussed effectively. Newsgroup moderation is one of the remedies for such situations. Moderation is about people, not programs. In other words, any software that the moderator uses should have a goal of making a discussion more useful and enjoyable for its participants and readers, and save time for posters and moderators alike. Proper software can be immensely beneficial in facilitating online communities, but bad software can be a great impediment to them. Q: What personal qualities are required from moderators? A: My long experience with USENET, being a moderator myself, and communicating with my fellow moderators and users of my moderation programs convinced me that the most important qualities are, surprisingly: o patience o sense of humor Newsgroup moderation is a challenge, because a moderator has to deal with computer programs as well as people, and both are highly unpredictable and at times the solutions to problems are not immediately obvious. The two qualities listed above prevent moderators from making mistakes that are often not easily reversible. Q: What technical skills are required from moderators? A: The short answer is none. Even an AOL user can now be an effective moderator. Some of my users moderate from Prodigy and are highly popular in their newsgroups for the good that they do to them. The long answer is that the more technical skills you have, the more options and solutions for the moderation process are available. Knowledge of Unix and NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol) are valuable, although by no means necessary, skills. Q: What about team moderation? A: Generally, there are three ways to moderate a newsgroup: 1) Moderation is done solely by a computer program (bot), with no human input for individual articles 2) Moderation is done by an individual human being, possibly helped by a program that automatically approves/rejects certain articles. 3) Moderation is done by a group of people, again possibly helped by a program. There are many possible factors that influence the choices for each newsgroup. However, team moderation has certain advantages over moderation by an individual person. Most importantly, it ensures continuity of the newsgroup. In very many cases, moderators who take on moderation all by themselves find other things to do with their life, or suffer from "moderator burnout" caused by inadequate software. Team moderation, especially for newsgroups with many postings in them, ensures adequate workloads for individual people. Moderators are human beings, they get sick, fall in love, work overtime, have kids and so on. In most (all I know of) cases they are unpaid. It is unfair to require from them to be on a 24 hour per day alert and to never take a vacation. Team moderation ensures that individual moderators have a life. It ensures that your newsgroup will be well taken care of. [Added by Baird Stafford] > Team moderation also ensures a more even flow of articles through the > group. If a newsgroup has five moderators, articles will be approved > five times a day minimum rather than once a day minimum. (Some > moderators seem to log in to the moderation site more frequently, some > less.) An article will sit in queue for considerably less time, on > average, if more than one person is doing the work - especially if > they're scattered 'round the world and can monitor the group on a > 24-hour basis. Q: What risk does moderation introduce? [added by Gary Johnson] A: Newsgroup failure, short and long term. Through mistake, oversight, complication, bad luck or intent. Responsibilities, and headaches, that are distributed with normal newsgroups become focused with moderation. Be prepared to be diligent, underappreciated and blamed. Especially in the beginning, when the problems will be new. Q: What moderation programs do you provide? A: There are two kinds of programs, all of which are free if you want to install them by yourself. For those who do not want to deal with installation and maintenance, I provide services so that the only thing that the user is to do is clicking mouse buttons. (see next question). 1) STUMP is a moderation bot that gives moderators a capability to operate in one of the three modes listed above -- fully automated, single user, and team moderation. STUMP is an abbreviation for Secure Team-based USENET Moderation Program. It is the most popular moderation bot on USENET today, and is in use by about 23 newsgroups, and counting. It is a sophisticated program designed specifically for newsgroups with medium to high posting volumes. It is described at: http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump You can download and find installation instructions and other useful documentation there. There is also a mailing list for STUMP users. Moderation can be done either by email or through the web (see WebSTUMP below). Web moderation is a lot faster and more convenient. 2) WebSTUMP is a user interface for STUMP users. It allows moderators to do all their work from their favorite Web browser, from any place on the planet. It gives a shared message queue to all moderators. It is described on the STUMP Web Page. WebSTUMP is free for those who want to download and install it. I also rent space on my WebSTUMP installation to existing STUMP users if they have no Web/CGI capability. You can "test drive" WebSTUMP and look at the documentation by going to: http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/webstump A free two months trial period is provided to any STUMP user. ReadySTUMP users get WebSTUMP as part of their package. Q: What services do you provide? A: First of all, my mission is to help people in various newsgroups communicate. Making money is a nice, but incidental, addition to that highly enjoyable activity. I do not want to push anyone into purchasing any services from me in they do not need them. I would much rather see a happy newsgroup that uses my (or other) moderation programs, than see a potentially great newsgroup fail or moderators quit. I do answer installation questions from my non-paying users. 1) ReadySTUMP is a service where I give you an account for STUMP, perform all the installation, and give you access to WebSTUMP. You get the following: o Ability to moderate with a team of people o Mailing list for moderators o WebSTUMP user interface o A customized "Home Page" for your newsgroup where you can place important documents such as your newsgroup charter and FAQ and information about moderators o Customized boilerplate messages with rejection reasons can be set up. ReadySTUMP is described in great detail at http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/hosting 2) I rent space on WebSTUMP for those moderators who install STUMP on their own but cannot install WebSTUMP by themselves. A free trial period is provided because I am certain that WebSTUMP is the preferred user interface solution. Test drive it at http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/webstump 3) For those moderators who need a simple and inexpensive solution, I will rent GateKeeper for them. However, it is still in development. Please write to me and let me know if you have an interest in this service. Q: What do I have to know and have to use them? A: How well do you have to know Unix to install STUMP? If you can answer this quiz, you are probably up to date. o What is a .profile file? o How do you rename a file? o What is "make" and "Makefile"? o What is "sendmail"? o What is Perl? o What is a .forward file? o What does "tail -f" do? What do you need to install STUMP: o A Unix shell account o [preferably but not necessary] Ability to set up or ask your sysadmin to set up sendmail aliases o perl o C compiler [I do provide precompiled binaries for Linux and FreeBSD but not other OSes] What do you need to know to install WebSTUMP? [IMPORTANT: YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING LISTED BELOW TO _USE_ IT] o Perl o HTML o The general idea of CGI o Your webserver o Perhaps some shell programming o Security ramifications of setuid programs What do you need to have to install WebSTUMP? o Your own web page on a webserver o Ability to install setuid cgi-bin applications Q: Which program/service is right for me? A: Below I'll try trying to summarize various categories of users and options that are, in my opinion, are optimal: 1. You (or a member of your moderation team) know Unix and have access to a Unix account. You do not mind instaling a modbot by yourself and maintaining it. You can have sendmail aliases set up (and you know what sendmail aliases are). In this case, STUMP is the solution for you. Download it, join the stump-users mailing list for advice, and go ahead. If you have a capability/skills to install a Web page/CGI script, you can use WebSTUMP for maximum speed and easiness of moderation. If you do not, you can either use email for moderation, or (for easier processing) rent space on my WebSTUMP installation. I can give you a free trial. 2. You use STUMP, for some reason cannot install WebSTUMP, but would like to use Web moderation instead of email moderation (probably to have a shared queue and save time with better user interface). In this case, look at WebSTUMP (see above), ask me for a free trial and possibly decide to rent WebSTUMP. 3. You are the only moderator of an existing or proposed newsgroup. You would like to make your moderation as easy as possible, and do not want to deal with any technical stuff. You expect to have low ot moderate (< 20 messages per day) traffic. In this case, my future program, code named Gatekeeper, may be right for you. It will use WebSTUMP user interface. You can test drive it now by going to http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/webstump You will be able to rent Gatekeeper/WebSTUMP for a low annual fee and be free of any technical worries. Q: How can you help us with installation? There is a mailing list for STUMP users. Anyone can subscribe. I do monitor the list and answer questions. To subscribe to it, send email to majordomo @ algebra.com that says "subscribe stump-users". Lately, I have received numerous requests from non-UNIX people who wanted me to install STUMP at their site, for a fee. (installing STUMP requires some knowledge of Unix). I do provide an installation service and also provide a five month "warranty", which means that if something breaks with your installation, I will be there to help. DESPITE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS COMMERCIAL SERVICE, I do answer questions from those who install STUMP by themselves. That's completely free as long as the amount of questions is reasonable. My philosophy with respect to installation services is that I can do it for people who cannot do it by themselves, as long as my time is compensated, but I do not mind helping others. Q: Which newsgroups use STUMP? A: The list below is probably incomplete, but to the best of my knowledge, it is: soc.culture.russian.moderated (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) soc.religion.paganism (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) misc.invest.financial-plan (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) comp.os.ms-windows.win95.moderated soc.culture.african.american.moderated soc.culture.galiza rec.food.cuisine.jewish rec.martial-arts.moderated soc.sexuality.general alt.business.telemarketing rec.gambling.blackjack.moderated mensa.au.announce and mensa.au.events Several local WebTV newsgroups rec.bicycles.off-road alt.toys.transformers.classical.moderated rec.sports.pro-wrestling.moderated alt.sexual.abuse.recovery.moderated (uses ReadySTUMP) alt.religion.wicca.moderated (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) alt.music.weird rec.humor.jewish rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated soc.culture.indian.kerala.moderated misc.kids.moderated soc.support.aids-hiv+ (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) alt.activism.eco-action alt.sex.stories.gay.moderated (uses ReadySTUMP moderation site hosting) soc.politics.marxism alt.life.sucks.moderated soc.culture.spain uk.environment (?) comp.emulators.announce alt.astrology.moderated alt.math.moderated alt.binaries.celebrities.fake.moderated alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.female.young.moderated comp.software.year-2000.tech alt.support.depression.recovery.sanctuary alt.support.childfree.moderated Q: What other moderation programs are available? A: [THIS SECTION IS PROBABLY INCOMPLETE. I WELCOME URLs AND CORRECTIONS] Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) has developed a Perl 5 module News::Gateway that is a library for building robomoderators. It is available at CPAN. Jay Denebeim developed a robomod that works without any human input. Mike Sullivan has some really interesting robomoderator for soc.singles.moderated. http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~ftp/pub/automod There is a moderation program used for scj.parenting, scjp.randomizer. You can get information by sending the command "send randomizer" to faigin@shamash.org