fml 8 tutorial
Prev | Chapter 17. Case Studies Of Customization | Next

# Case Study: Article Posting Allowd If It Is A Reply To The Former One.

From time to time we can find that a posted article is denied due to posting from not a member.

One reason is that the member who replied some article forgot to notify changes of his/her mail address to the mailing list administrator. Another reason that his/her mail address is changed from @DOMAIN to @SUB.DOMAIN vice versa. Yet another reason is that he/she replied it from other location which recieved the article via mail forwarding at some other host.

After 2004/10/28 fml8 current, fml8 supports "allow article post irrespective of the From: address if some condition satisfied" at article_post_restrictions.

The current implementation suppors the condition that "if the reply refers a known message-id within some time limit". Precisely speaking, "known message-id" implies the id is found at the message-id database which holds In-Reply-To: and References: of old articles within some time limit (e.g. one week).

## Recipes

1. Article Posting Allowd If It Is A Reply To The Former One.

1. Article Posting Allowd If It Is A Reply To The Former One.

"check_article_thread" is the keyword to enable this check.

    article_post_restrictions       =       reject_system_special_accounts
                                            check_article_thread
                                            permit_member_maps
                                            reject

Not used by default. To use it, specify it at article_post_restrictions.

## Discussion

Hmm, this is similar to a cookie. There are some problems.

1) What is proper time scale ? $article_post_article_thread_lifetime controlls it. One day by default.

    article_post_article_thread_lifetime = 86400

Also, boundary of the time scale ? When starts the allowd window ? It starts from the first article of the specific thread ? Or from the last article ?

2) More restricted condition support required ? If so, we should check the corelation between subject: and the thread?

## Recipes

1. Only A Few Persons Can Starts Article Thread.

1. Only A Few Persons Can Starts Article Thread.

    member_maps			=       $tmp_dir/members-thread-init

    article_post_restrictions       =       reject_system_special_accounts
                                            check_article_thread
                                            permit_member_maps
                                            reject

Only persons registered at members-thread-init file can post article always. Other persons can post the article if the article is a reply to some other article.

Hmm, it looks a variation of moderator system ?

Better that they use PGP auth if could.

    member_maps			=       $tmp_dir/members-thread-init

    article_post_restrictions       =       reject_system_special_accounts
                                            check_article_thread
                                            check_pgp_signature
                                            reject

Prev | Home | Next
Case Study: Anyone Can Post. | Up | Case Study: PGP/PGP Based Authentication In Posting

fml 8.0 (fml-devel) project homepage is www.fml.org/software/fml8/.
fml 4.0 project homepage is www.fml.org/software/fml4/.
about one floppy bsd routers, see www.bsdrouter.org/.
other free softwares are found at www.fml.org/software/.

author's homepage is www.fml.org/home/fukachan/.
Also, visit nuinui's world :) at www.nuinui.net.

For questions about FML, e-mail <fml-bugs@fml.org>.