STUMP Robomoderator Program

``Making Moderation Easy''


Also: Algebra, History of Algebra.

STUMP means Secure Team-based Usenet Moderation Program. STUMP is currently working in production and is stable. The robomoderator code is portable and configurable and is publicly available for moderator teams on USENET for free.

I developed STUMP before starting work on my site with Algebra homework help.

Test Drive It

If you want to propose a newsgroup, click here.

Even though STUMP is FREE, and there is a unrestricted mailing list for STUMP support, we offer commercial site hosting. It means that if you do not want to deal with Unix-based stuff, we'll set it up for you on a centrally managed server. We provide you with a service guarantee and give you an easy to use web interface for moderation.
Click here for more information

Moderation of picture newsgroups: Users of ReadySTUMP can now moderate newsgroups with pictures. Articles with embedded pictures (uuencoded or MIME) will be displayed properly (as graphical images) to the moderators. That makes it possible to create moderated newsgroups with pictures and moderate them easily. At the moment, I limited this service to users of ReadySTUMP, for technical reasons. If you are interested in creating a moderated picture newsgroup click here.

There is a List of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

STUMP can submit approved articles through many ISPS, such as this fine Newsgroup Provider, as well as other news servers.

STUMP is currently used by the following newsgroups: STUMP is more than just a program. It is also my commitment to support and maintain it and its users in the best way possible. It is also a community of existing users who can help you with their advice. My goal is to keep STUMP the most flexible, easiest to use for human moderators, and most full featured package available. I actively solicit you to make your suggestions to improve STUMP, and welcome any and all criticism.

Basic features of the Robomoderator

Can run on any Unix. Moderators can use Unix, Windows and Mac, and AOL, and generally can do their job as long as they are able to read email.

Web-based moderation ( Test Drive It) is also possible. It can be done by moderators even without knowledge of CGI or access to a CGI-enabled Web server -- a centrally managed server is available as well as the ability to set up your own webservers if you want to.

Documentation is available in WWW form. (see Instructions below)

User support available through stump-users mailing list.

Extremely versatile but easy configuration management.

Support for group moderation -- multiple human moderators, which are randomly chosen for every incoming message that needs to be reviewed.

Automatic rejection of nonconforming messages, for example megacrossposts and encoded binaries are rejected automatically without human intervention.

Support of a preapproved list of posters whose posts are presumed to be good and do not need human review. It can help the moderator team to save their time and speed up posts by frequent posters. In practice, about 80% of moderators' time can be saved with this feature.

Everything is archived. Achives may be presented as WWW Pages like this.

Exchange between human moderators and robomod program is secured by PGP encryption and signatures. It prevents any "spoofing" of the robomoderator, when malicious users try to simulate fake moderators' approvals. This security is provided internally by perl scripts, and human moderators need not bother - everything is done for them.

Acknowledgments of receipt, rejection messages with explanations (standardized or supplied by human moderators) are sent back to posters.

All approved articles are digitally signed by PMApp program by Greg Rose. It provides positive and reliable identification of forgeries and unapproved posts. A daemon program is provided that looks for all unauthorized posts and deletes them automatically.
Note that these signatures are placed in the header of the post and they do not clutter the actual text of the messages. These scripts also provide protectin from subtle impersonation attacks described by Dr. Vulis.

Some posters may request additional protection from forgeries.

Support for a moderators'-only mailing list. This is nice for newsgroups that have more than one moderator.

Typical Setups Supported

STUMP supports the following typical configurations of robomoderator programs:

We shall note that the configurations above can be easily changed by changing contents of certain data files, and elements of these configurations can be intermixed (i.e., any newsgroup may restrict the number of crossposts or choose to send FAQ to posters).

Contents

Specification and Basic Concepts

Installation Instructions

FAQ

There is a List of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This is NOT a FAQ about installation, but rather a list of more general questions.

ReadySTUMP worry-free moderation site hosting

For Proponents

If you want to propose a newsgroup, click here.

Downloading

You can download sources of STUMP from my FTP site

Acknowledgments

I must express my gratitude to (in aplhabetical order)

Russian Translation USA.
Professional technical and commercial translation
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