The clerk is a software, which helps a collective of people to maintain one or more moderated mailing lists.
If someone sends a mail to a mailing list, this is not always appreciated. To prevent unwanted mails from appearing in a mailing list, one can moderate it.
Moderation is usually done by a single person, which needs some technical knowledge.
This is both undesriable. More than one person with little or no technical language should be able to moderate a mailing list. However, a little bit of understanding is needed - as with any technical thing.
The problem solved by the clerk, arose in a project, which was run
by a majordomo at this time. The software is implemented by
Stefan Merten, who is reachable at smerten@oekonux.de.
In the beginning someone sends an arbitrary mail to the moderated mailing list (list).
Instead of being posted to the members of the mailing list, the mail is sent to the clerk, which stores the mailing list in the approval queue. Moreover it sends the mail to the unmoderated counter-part of the moderated list (list-raw). This way the unmoderated contents of the list is available without any delay.
A worker is a person, which helps moderating the list. A worker has to be part of the organizational collective to be recognized as a worker. This means, that s/he has to be subscribed to another list (list-org)
Moreover s/he has to be subscribed to the unmoderated mailing list (list-raw), so s/he is aware of what is available for approval.
If a worker sees a post, which s/he finds ok to get into the moderated list, s/he may approve it. To do this, s/he may simply reply to the mail in question. In the reply s/he has to write the single command
! approve
in the body, and the clerk sends the original post to the moderated list.
The reply is send to another working mailing list (list-work). All workers should be subscribed to this list to be aware of what other workers do.
The clerk is subscribed to this list, too. It listens there for command mails.
The following example tries to show a small example, of the things said above.
In the beginning Some One decided to post a mail to list,
because s/he find the contents belongs on this list. This is what s/he
might send:
From: Some One <someone@some.where>
To: list@example.com
Subject: Something in Somewhere
Message-Id: <127437.jhfg@some.where>
Hi folks!
I took part in something in Somewhere three days ago, and
here's my report:
...
Instead of going to the list it is intended for, it goes to the clerk.
The clerk sends the post immediately to the unmoderated counter-part list-raw:
From: Some One <someone@some.where>
To: list-raw@example.com
Subject: Something in Somewhere
Reply-To: list-work@example.com
Message-Id: <127437.jhfg@some.where>
X-Clerk-Received-Via: list@example.com
Hi folks!
I took part in something in Somewhere three days ago, and
here's my report:
...
Any person subscribed to list-raw gets the post immediately.
Moreover the clerk puts the post in whole into the approval queue. This is an internal data base, which keeps information about all received posts.
The worker Editn Work getting this post, may find it a valid post
for list. However, s/he notes, that there is a language tag
missing, which should be present to identify the language in the
subject of the post.
S/he simply replies to the post received via list-raw:
From: Editn Work <ew@else.where>
To: list-work@example.com
Subject: Re: Something in Somewhere
In-Reply-To: <127437.jhfg@some.where>
Message-Id: <jsfgdjdh.212541254@else.where>
That is an English post!
! language en
I found it interesting, so I
! approve
it.
The header of the post is automatically laid out by hir mailer, when s/he replies to the mail. May be hir mailer, automatically includes the referenced mail. If this is the case, s/he deleted that stuff.
S/he added the language tag en to indicate it's an English post.
After that s/he approves the post, by another command.
The clerk receives the mail, and interprets it as a command mail.
It recognizes that the mail is posted by the worker ew@else.where,
by looking at the subscribers of list-org.
The header of the mail tells the clerk, that the worker talks about
the post with subject Something in Somewhere. The clerk scans and
parses the mail and finds the two commands language and approve.
Since there's nothing wrong with these commands, it executes them. This means tagging the language tag onto the post, and sent it to the moderated list.
From: Some One <someone@some.where>
To: list@example.com
Subject: (en) Something in Somewhere
Reply-To: list-work@example.com
Message-Id: <127437.jhfg@some.where>
X-Clerk-Received-Via: list@example.com
X-Clerk-Advised-Language: en
X-Clerk-Approved-By: ew@else.where
Hi folks!
I took part in something in Somewhere three days ago, and
here's my report:
...
There is a lot more, but for a simple example this may suffice. After all you're now able to help moderation.