Moderation of alt.sources through Mass Admonition

[Tom Christiansen]

At the request of someone in email, I'm posting my rn magic for 
sending someone an automatic message gently chiding them for 
their misplaced posting into alt.sources.  I think that this may be
the only way to get the group cleaned up, since moderating it 
would defeat part of its purpose.  A user who gets a dozen reminders
from the net that they posted to the wrong place will not be quick
to repeat the error.

I used something like this on all the folks last week, and of the replies
to it, all but one were like "oh -- I didn't know that" or "oops --
thought it went to alt.sources.d" and thanked me.  However, one individual
(not to name names, but it was "David G. Grubbs" <dgg at ksr.com>) replied
angrily that he could damn well post what he wanted where he wanted, and
this just part of being an unmoderated group, so to buzz off.  Peer
pressure might be the only remedy to intransigents like this.

Here's what to do:  first, put this in your .rnmac file:

^t !Mail -s "Your misposted article %i in %n (was: %s)" %t < ~/.sources-complaint\n

For ease of posting this to the news system, there are no control
characters there.  ^t is caret-t, although it will translate into a real
control-T, and the \n is a backslash-n, which will turn into a real newline.

Now, place the following text, or whatever you feel is appropriate,
into the file ~/.sources-complaint:

============= begin cut here ==============
You posted the referenced article to the newsgroup alt.sources, which
is best used only for source code.  Your posting was not source code.
Please post requests to alt.sources.wanted, while comments and
discussion should go to the alt.sources.d newsgroup.

Perhaps your posting was unintentional.  When following up to articles in
alt.sources, please check the newsgroups line carefully.  Many posters to
alt.sources neglect to include a reasonable follow-up line redirecting
responses to alt.sources.d.

Thanks for doing your part as a good net citizen.

Angry replies to this message will be summarily ignored.

[This message automatically generated.]
============= end cut here ==============

Then all you have to do is hit ^T when you read a mis-posted message in
alt.sources, and rn will do the rest.  This works for the threaded flavor
of rn (trn) as well.  Note the mail command uses ucbmail; adjust
accordingly.


--tom