Re: injecting cancel control messages in moderated groups

Julien <iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid> wrote:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5537#section-5.3
indicates that cancels can be used to cancel messages in a moderated
group.

   Cancel control messages listing moderated newsgroups in their
   Newsgroups header field MUST contain an Approved header field like
   any other article in a moderated newsgroup.  This means that cancels
   posted to a moderated newsgroup will normally be sent to the
   moderator first for approval.  Outside of moderated newsgroups,
   cancel messages are not required to contain an Approved header field.

How is the process here?
When issuing a cancel message in a moderated group, should the NUA send
it to the group itself without an approved header?

The same process applies to the injection of articles in moderated
newsgroups, either they have a Control header field (like cancels), a
Supersedes header field, or none of these.

Notably Section 3.5 of RFC 5537 about the duties of an injecting agent:

  7.   If the Newsgroups header contains one or more moderated groups
       and the proto-article does not contain an Approved header field,
       the injecting agent MUST either forward it to a moderator as
       specified in Section 3.5.1 or, if that is not possible, reject
       it.  This forwarding MUST be done after adding the Message-ID
       and Date headers if required, and before adding the Injection-
       Info and Injection-Date headers.

And afterwards, Section 3.9 about the duties of a moderator.

PS: I currently file a bug report for Claws Mail as it includes an
Approved: header in a cancel message - for unmoderated and moderated
groups.

I agree the news reader should not add an Approved header field to
cancels it sends.

If processing a self-approved Control message of an article posted to a
moderated newsgroup is a matter of local policy, can you tell me why
that was thought to be a good idea? I'm missing something here.

Nobody was really thinking that third-party cancel messages in moderated
newsgroups were going to be used as a spam coutermeasure, were they? Seems
to me that if somebody was caught bypassing moderation to inject spam,
then the News site would be de-peered.