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Old October 14th 16, 11:21 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply[_2_]
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Posts: 1
Default Administrivia

Here is some information on a current problem with newsgroup
submissions.

Contents:
Background
Current problem
Workaround
Solution
Acknowledgements

Background:

When an article is posted to a moderated group, instead of showing up on
the posting host right away and then quickly propagating to other news
servers, it gets emailed to a special address
, where group is the newsgroup name with
dots replaced with dashes. Thus, you can send an article to
sci-astro-research( a t )moderators.isc.org (using the proper standard
email character) instead of posting through a newsreader (though a
newsreader will add additional headers which can be useful for placing
the post within a thread and so on). This should always work. Mail
sent here is then forwarded to the "real" submission address. However,
at http://www.astro.multivax.de:8000/sar/sar.html or rather at
http://www.extragalactic.info/sar/charter.html which is where the former
URL now directs one to, one can read:

The submission address for articles will be


Remove animal for valid address.

This address is mentioned there, rather the "real" submission address
(which in turn forwards the post to one of the active moderators), since
it should always work, even if the moderation team changes or whatever.

However, the isc.org address is a bit less reliable than the "real"
submission address, since if there are problems it might not be clear
whether it is with the news client, the local news server, or perhaps
the isc.org address, so mailing directly to the real submission address
is more likely to work.

The real submission address is:



Remove animal for valid address.

Current problem:

Indeed, there is now a problem with the isc.org address, or perhaps has
been for some time. When an email is sent, an MX lookup is done, which
returns a list of IP addresses which know how to handle email for the
given email address. One (and there might be only one) might point to
the computer where the email is received and read; more usual is that it
will forward the email to another machine (which perhaps can't receive
internet email directly, or might not even be on the internet). If
there is more than one address, relative priority determines which is
used, and the next tried if the first doesn't work and so on. At
isc.org, there are three addresses (which thus implements load
balancing) which should be able to forward to the "real" submission
address.

One of these has a problem. The email client should use one of these
equal-priority addresses at random, but some might use only one. In any
case, some posts to sci.astro.research have been lost because of this
(and sending to the isc.org address won't help, since that is where the
problem is).

Workaround:

Until this is fixed, there are two sensible options. If it is not
urgent, post as normal via your newsreader. If it doesn't show up
within, say, 3 days, post again, and so on. (Yes, if you post several
copies at short intervals, some might get through, but probably more
than one will, and they might end up at different moderators, causing
additional work, so please don't do this.) Since we know there is a
problem, the advice about using the request address to check on lost
posts should be temporarily suspended. Another option is to email the
"real" submission address, which definitely works.

Other moderated groups might be affected as well.

Solution:

We'll announce here when the problem has been fixed.

Thanks to some participants of this group for helping us to find the
cause of the problem. (We might have found it sooner if some other
participants hadn't accused us of "censoring" their posts and/or
intentionally delaying them or posting them only after being inundated
by rapid-fire multiple copies.) As always, all posts (except obvious
spam and moderator-abuse posts) will either be approved or get a
rejection notice, provided a valid return address is provided. Of
course, this applies only to posts which reach the moderators. It is
rare that posts disappear if the local newsreader and local news
server (NNTP posting host) are correctly configured, but as the current
problem shows, it does happen occasionally.

 




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