BBLEADER(1)

NAME
BBleader - responsiblities of an MH BBoard-leader

SYNOPSIS
bbl bboard [+folder] [-shell shell] [-verbose] [-help]

DESCRIPTION
What follows is a description of the responsibilities of a BBleader. This is a working collection of facts: there are no simple or elegant rules. In the discussion that follows, substitute in the name of your BBoard wherever you see the ficticious name ``hacks''.
Preliminary Maintenance
When you are appointed a BBleader by the person who is acting as the PostMaster you should first make sure that the four addresses associated with your BBoard are correct (see bboards (1)). To check this, try “bbc -topics -verbose hacks”. You should be listed under local leader(s), and the BBoard addresses should be correct.
Periodic Maintenance
There are three functions that you should perform periodically:
Read the BBoard : If you're a BBoard leader you should be keeping up on what's going on.
Remove inappropriate material : If offsensive or otherwise non-sensical material shows up, or if a duplicate message appears, use the BBl program, delete the offending messages from the folder.
Archive non-recent material : The archive facility has been upgraded to be almost fully automated. BBoards with the Auto-Archive flag set will have old material automatically placed in the archive area once a week. You may also archive material yourself if you like, or if your BBoard is not set to Auto-Archive. Just file messages in the folder ``+bbl'' into the folder ``+bbl/arc'' You should archive material whenever it takes a long time to read in a BBoard using bbc and msh. The only exception to this is (possibly) the ap-news and ny-times BBoards, in which case non-recent material is usually deleted, and an archive is not kept.
Sporadic Maintenance
As a BBoard leader there are three groups of people that you will be required to deal with:
BBoard users : Correspondence from BBoard users is usually addressed to local-hacks-request. Although the nature of such correspondence varies, the most usual topic is how to get access to archives for the BBoard. In such cases, if the archives are on-line in the ~bboards/archive/ area, then you should refer the BBoard user to the appropriate files. If not, then you should contact the PostMaster and ask for archive retrieval. Archives may be accessed through the normal bbc and msh programs, using the `-archive' switch to bbc.
BBoard leaders : You may have to correspond with the people who maintain the Internet mailing list for the BBoard. Their address is hacks-request.
PostOffice personnel : You may need help or advice. The address to turn to is PostMaster.
^$HOME/.mh_profile~^The user profile ^Path:~^To determine the user's MH directory bboards(1), bbc(1), bbl(1), msh(1) The default bboard is “system” None