Re: Mail posting in newsgroups in Gnus

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

N. Raghavendra wrote:
> I read the mailing lists I am subscribed to as newsgroups through Gmane.

Many people do.  All good and okay.

> Lately, I've been having problems with posting through Gmane --- posts
> don't reach the mailing list for several hours, first postings to a list
> don't trigger an auto-authorization message from Gmane, etc.

I just want to say here that mail isn't instant messenger or IRC.  It
is a store and forward protocol.  We are so used to mail being
delivered very quickly, almost immediately, that when it isn't
immediate we think something is wrong.  But most of the time
everything is working as designed.  The mail will queue and then retry
and send later.  Plus often the delay is in the lists.gnu.org mail
queue and there isn't anything we can do about that.

Also no gnu.org mailing list should send automatic responses.  Because
anyone can mail anything with any return address to a mailing list.
Spammers use that to create "backscatter spam" where either the
message is bounced back to the target vicitim or the target victim is
hit with endless autoreplies from everywhere in a denial of service
attack.  Having autoreplies enabled previously has landed
lists.gnu.org onto the DNSBLs as a bad citizen previously.  Therefore
autoreplies are not allowed.

Also one need not be subscribed in order to post.  GNU mailing lists
are mostly either for bug reports or for getting help such as this
list.  Forcing people to subscribe in order to post a bug report is
too restrictive.  Therefore like most free libre community mailing
lists our lists are open to non-subscribers.  However this means that
we hold all new posters for moderation.  This applies to both
subscribers and non-subscribers alike.  Otherwise there would be too
much spam.

These requirements mean that there is a delay upon initial contact.
But hopefully the subscribers here are happy with the hopefully very
low level of spam to the mailing lists due to these actions.

Your address is both whitelisted and subscribed.  Therefore you have
both posted and have subscribed.  There will be no moderation of your
messages unless you change your address.

> So, I am wondering if it is possible to post articles and followups in
> Gmane newsgroups by email.

Yes.  It is just email.  However the technicalities you ask about with
gnus are beyond me as I do not know very much about it.

> For example, if I am in the summary buffer of the
> gmane.emacs.orgmode group, and hit `a', I'd like Gnus to start
> composing a mail message to emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.  Similarly, if I
> am in the summary buffer of that group and hit "F", I'd like Gnus to
> start composing a *mail* reply to the selected article, with
> emacs-orgmode@gnu.org as the "To" address.  Is there a way to do
> this?

I do not know the answer to your question and leave this to others to
answer.

> I was reading about group parameters in the manual.  Will setting
> to-address and to-list parameters of the gmane.emacs.orgmode group to
> emacs-orgmode@gnu.org do what I've described above?  Unfortunately, I
> can't test it without spamming the mailing list with test messages.

In theory this is just email, simply needs the In-Reply-To: and
References: set correctly, and that is all.  However I don't know
about the details of the interface you are asking about.  Actually
getting that working might be difficult.  What you are asking about is
normal if one subscribes to the mailing list and replies to the
messages using mail (or gnus) normally.

> PS: My apologies if you get multiple copies of this message.  I tried
> sending it through Gmane earlier.

Both came through.

Bob