================
Robomod Features
================

Team Moderation
===============

Robomod does not directly give individual moderators the authority
to approve or reject postings.  Instead all groups are configured
with the numbers of votes required to approve or reject a posting,
and moderators submit a vote for each post.  This setting can be
one, two, majority, or unanimous vote, and the fate of a post is
decided as soon as possible.  Thus if a group is configured for one
vote to approve or reject, the first vote will decide the fate of
the posting, but this is far from the only configuration possible.
(Though most groups are currently configured this way.)

As a result, all moderators see all posts.  In order to cut down
on excessive work, whenever a posting is approved or rejected a
message to that effect is sent out to all moderators, so a moderator
can easily skip over postings that have already been dealt with by
a teammate.  There is also a daily report on all pending (and
recently approved and rejected) submissions to help prevent items
getting forgotten in the incoming queue.  Lastly, there is also a
maximum queue time, after which messages are auto-rejected if a
decision has not already been made.

All communication is done by email, from distribution of submissions,
to collection of votes, announcement of results, and daily queue
reports.  There is also support for access by email and web to a
text and/or HTML file repository for the group.  Files can be added
and updated by the moderators, again by email.

Poster Registration
===================

By default, all postings are held for hand moderation.  To reduce
load on the moderators, many groups use poster registration, whereby
addresses of known good posters are recorded and any posts from
such addresses are automatically approved, unless they are flagged
by some other posting filter.  Moderators can add new addresses to
this list at any time, and by default groups are configured so that
posters can add themselves to the approved list as well.  Groups
can be configured so that only moderators can approve posters.
Addresses can also be registered as explicitly unapproved, so that
all posts from that address will always be held for hand moderation.

It is also possible to turn off the poster registration system, so
that all postings are accepted so long as they are not flagged by
one of the other filters.  This setting can be used to implement
full robomoderation, where humans are not involved at all in the
day-to-day operation of the group.

HTML and Attachments
====================

By default robomod strips all non-text attachments and converts all
HTML to plain text.  By default, postings that are so converted are
held for manual moderation, as the conversion may have rendered
them unreadable.  This conversion can be disabled if necessary for
particular groups.

Crossposting
============

Robomod can limit both crossposting and followups (independantly)
to a maximum number of groups.  It can set default followups to a
particular group unless otherwise specified.  It can also reject
crossposting to a given list of groups, or outside of a given list
of groups.  Crossposts to particular groups can also be configured
to always be hand moderated, even if made by approved posters.

Quoting and Line Lengths
========================

Robomod can be configured to recognize overquoting (more than N%
quoted text, by default 70%) in a number of forms.  (Some forms are
not feasible to recognize reliably, but it does pretty well overall.)
It can respond in a number of ways, including just sending a warning
each time, holding overquoted posts for hand moderation, or rejecting
them outright.  It also has a "quote quota" system whereby a few
overquoted postings are allowed (no more than two in a row), so
long as they are balanced by properly quoted postings.

Robomod also enforces line length limitations, so that posters wrap
their paragraphs properly.  It implements both a soft and a hard
limit (typically 79 and 160 characters), where the soft limit can
be overridden by the poster if they use a certain phrase in the
body of the message, while the hard limit cannot be overridden.
This allows for things like code, log messages, or wide tables on
occasion, which generally keeping paragraphs wrapped at a reasonable
width.  As with quoting, exceeding either limit can be configured
to just send a warning, be held for hand moderation, or be rejected.
By default, posts exceeding the soft limit are held for hand
moderation, while posts exceeding the hard limit are rejected.

Taboos
======

A taboo is a word or phrase that if present in a posting will cause
a warning to be issued to the poster, have it held for hand moderation,
or simply rejected.  Taboos can be set by the moderators specific
to the subject, from, any header, or the body of a message.  This
feature is most commonly used to apply closer oversight to problematic
threads (via a subject taboo).

Subject Tags
============

Subject tagging in either the TAG: or [TAG] format can be enforced
by robomod.  It can be configured to accept any tag in the correct
format, or require one from a list of specific tags.

Antispam
========

In addition to formatting constraints, which by themselves eliminate
a considerable amount of spam, robomod also implements a Bayesian
analysis filter to filter spam from both the submission and moderator
contact addresses.  Rejected postings are monitored by the site
admin for false positives, which are manually reposted, and the
Bayesian training database updated.

The robomod.net mail server also does a fair amount of technical
spam detection before mail even reaches the robomod system, so only
a small fraction of incoming spam ever reaches moderator mailboxes.

EOF