Mail-to-news gateways
It has come to my attention that the Debian mailing lists are being
gatewayed into newsgroups which are then generally distributed across
USENET. (linux.debian.*)
Experience with mailing lists such as these strongly suggests that
this causes the lists and or their members to be sent email from
people who are not really connected with the subject matter and are
just clueless people looking for information.
The purpose of having mailing lists rather than having newsgroups is
to place a barrier to entry which protects the lists and their users
from invasion by the general uneducated hordes.
A news administrator with whom I have a peering arrangement writes:
[A user] pointed me in the direction of the person gatewaying the
lists to linux.debian.* - Christoph Lameter - and I've now checked the
position with him. He assures me that his gateway is approved by the
Debian leadership (his description; don't know who, personally or
collectively), and the intention is that it will be permanent.
Is it the case that this gateway is approved by someone ? If so, who,
and shouldn't we have had a say about it ?
I think that the policy should be that mailing lists (except _perhaps_
debian-user) should not be gatewayed into newsgroups which are
distributed across USENET generally, but only into local newsgroups
carried by systems who have explicitly gone to the trouble to set it
up. This will allow the convenience of reading these lists as news,
but will provide the barrier to entry I mention above.
Ian.
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