How to Post to a Moderated Usenet Newsgroup

Usenet messages consist of message headers and message bodies. The message header tells the news software how to process the message. Headers can be divided into two types, required and optional. Required headers are ones like “From” and “Newsgroups.” Without the required headers, your message will not be posted properly.

One of the optional headers is the “Approved” header. To post to a moderated Usenet newsgroup, simply add an Approved header line to your message header. The header line should contain the newsgroup moderators e-mail address. To see the correct format for your target newsgroup, save a message from the newsgroup and then look at it using any text editor.

An “Approved” header line should look like this:

	Approved: newsadmin@tech-faq.com

There cannot not be a blank line in the message header. A blank line will cause any portion of the header after the blank line to be interpreted as part of the message body.

For more information, read RFC 1036: Standard for Interchange of USENET messages.

Note that faking moderator approval may not make you friends on the newsgroup.