Re: Cypherpunks Goals: Bad debate drives out good debate

[gtoal@an-teallach.com (Graham Toal)]

		You have a good summary of what's going on. Personally I've
	found it useful to create a filter for my cypherpunks mail to send
	posts from people whom I respect more into a seperate folder such that
	the signal-to-noise ratio in that folder is higher. When I have more
	time I read the folder with the lower signal-to-noise ratio, but I
	often do not have those resources.
		I don't really have to deal with bad posts because I don't see
	most of them unless I have some extra time on my hands... Others
	interested in rational discussion and debate and actual-doing-things
	might find this a useful technique.

Ditto.  Actually I gateway c'punks straight into a local 'mail.cypherpunks'
group, with the hack script below (there might be an easier way, but I had
the code around anyway).

First, I created a user called 'cypher', then gave it this .forward:

suilven% cd ~cypher
suilven% cat .forward
"|mail2news mail.cypherpunks cypherpunks@toad.com"

Since I'm running the smrsh security wrappers, mail2news has to be in the
special smrsh directory, /usr/adm/sm.bin.

mail2news:
#!/usr/contrib/bin/taintperl
#
# mail2news - Incredibly simple program to take a mail message from
#             stdin and insert it into a moderated newsgroup so you can
#             read mailing list messages via news instead of mail.
#
# Usage: mail2news <newsgroup> <reply-gateway>
#
# Author: Stephen Hebditch <steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk>
#
# Operation:
#   1. Create a new local group (e.g. orbital.lists.uri) with moderated
#      status to contain the local messages.
#   2. Make sure the newsgroup isn't going to propagate outside your
#      system.
#   3. Modify mailpaths (C News) or moderators (INN) so that your local
#      replies get sent back to the mailing list.
#   4. Use a mail filter program (such as comes with elm) to divert
#      messages arriving from the list to this program instead.
#

# Add local config info here
# Make secure (from 'perl' man page)
$ENV{'PATH'} = '/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin';
$ENV{'IFS'} = '' if $ENV{'IFS'} ne '';

$path = $ENV{'PATH'};    # Not tainted

$domain = "suilven.an-teallach.com";
$rnews = "/bin/rnews";
$update = "/usr/local/bin/op updatetrn";
$user = "news";	# If badly installed, news will get the replies
$newsgroup = $ARGV[0];
if (!$newsgroup)
	{
	die ("No newsgroup name supplied\n");
	}

$replyaddr = $ARGV[1];
if (!$replyaddr)
	{
	$replyaddr = $user;
	}

$body = 0;
$kill = 0;
$subject = 0;

open (NEWS, "|$rnews") || die ("Can't run $rnews: $!\n");
print (NEWS "Newsgroups: $newsgroup\nPath: $domain!not-for-mail\n");
print (NEWS "Followup-To: poster\nReply-To: $replyaddr\n");
while (<STDIN>)
	{
	chop;
	if (!$body)
		{
		if (/^Subject:\s+(.*)$/io)
			{
			if ($1 ne "")
				{
				$subject++;
				print (NEWS "$_\n");
				}
			}
		# Add here any headers you wish to kill
		elsif (/^(Received|Return-Path|X400-Received|Newsgroups|Path|To|Reply-To):/io)
			{
			$kill++;
			}
		elsif (/^From\s.*$/io)
			{
			}
		elsif ((/^\s.*$/io) && ($kill))
			{
			}
		elsif ($_ eq "")
			{
			$body++;
			if (!$subject)
				{
				print (NEWS "Subject: <no subject>\n")
				}
			print (NEWS "Approved: news@$domain\n\n");
			}
		else
			{
			$kill = 0;
			print (NEWS "$_\n");
			}
		}
	else
		{
		print (NEWS "$_\n");
		}
	}

close (NEWS);
system($update);

exit (0);