Best would be if your bulk mailer program maintained a copy of the message
itself in a unique filename. Then send a message to the moderator or
moderators, which has a unique Subject line that includes a unique string.
Every MUA supports a reply function which preserves the subject line
(sometimes with a certain limit).
The bulk mailer program can use the subject line to locate the copy of
the original message and inject it to the mailing list if the moderator
approves it. If the moderator explicitly rejects it, the bulk mailer
program can generate the 'your message was rejected by the moderator'
message. And if a message isn't accepted or rejected in NNN hours the
bulk mailer could decide to simply forward the message to the mailing
list (under the assumption the moderator is on vacation or otherwise
unavailable).
This works with all UAs, doesn't worry about addition of ">" or
forwarding headers, etc., and avoids problems with the moderator
censoring a portion of a message, munging which interferes with poorly-
encoded MIME, yadda yadda yadda.
-d
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-822(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org
[mailto:owner-ietf-822(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org]On
Behalf Of Keith Moore
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 9:39 PM
To: ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Cc: moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu
Subject: what's a good format for sending messages to a moderator?
I'm in the process of updating bulk_mailer, and the new version will have
a lot more ability to redirect messages based on several criteria:
whether the author is a subscriber, whether the author is on a list of
people with permission to post, whether there are too many recipient
addresses in the message header, whether the list address is in the
message header, and so on.
naturally, one of the options is to forward such messages to a moderator
who can then decide whether they're really okay for the list.
the question is: what format for such messages is the most compatible
with various user agents - to allow them to review the message and send
it back to the list if approved?
or, since my guess is that there isn't a way to do this that is supported
by existing user agents, perhaps a better question is this: would it
be worthwhile to define a standard profile of MIME to be used when
forwarding a message to a moderator for approval, and to send the message,
once approved, back to the list? would UA authors support such a thing?
Keith
p.s. what I'm doing currently is quite simplistic: prepend an
extra set of headers:
-----------------------------------------------
To: moderator
Subject: listname: reason for forwarding to moderator
Content-Type: message/rfc822
forwarded message goes here
-----------------------------------------------
and then it's fairly simple for a shell script to strip off those
headers and remail it back to the list. but I'm using MH.
I suspect most folks aren't using an interface that is so easily
scripted...