Subject: <draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-01.txt>

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:58:14 -0700 (PDT)

Let's see if the list is now open ...

Under definitions:

]   A "followup" is an article containing a response to the contents of
]   an earlier article (the followup's "precursor").
][Alternative definition, to bu ised if similar woprding is not added to
]the description of the References-header (a-6.10):]

What is "to bu ised"?

And no, the alternative text is not how followup is defined, since the
ability of the poster to define how articles are displayed does not exist.
Implying it does is incorrect.

The alternative I suggested is still better. Why has it never appeared in
any form?

It took a bit of looking, but I finally found the meaning of a-6.10. It 
would have been much simpler had you just used [ARTICLE ...] as the 
reference.

Under "defining the architecture":

   A "followup agent" is a combination of reading agent and posting
   agent that aids in the preparation and posting of a followup.
[Alternative definition, to be used if the alternative definition for
"followup" is used:]

   A "followup agent" is a combination of reading agent and posting
   agent that aids in the preparation and posting of a response intended
   as a followup to a precursor.

The latter is a meaningless extension of the former. From what else does
a followup come but a precursor? There is no reason for the 'alternative'.

Under 7.6, we are still presented with this stentorian "to be taken from"
wording, instead of the correct "copied from". Plus we have a lots of 
words in the initial paragraph that tell us that "taken from means copied
from". If that is true, just say "copied from" and get rid of the 
extraneous redefinition.

We still have the extraneous "by default". If the only action 
specified is to copy, I mean, "take", the content from the precursor's
similar header, then that IS the default, and saying "by default" is
meaningless. We are talking about the duties of the followup agent, which
INCLUDES giving the article to the poster for his changes. There is no
other action we specify for the followup agent, so there is nothing
but "default".

We also still have the extraneous "MAY be prepended" regarding "Re: " in
the Subject. Since there is no prohibition, of course it MAY be prepended.
And so may anything else. We need not say what MAY be prepended when the
truth of the matter is ANYTHING MAY be prepended.

Para. 4: "MUST be formed by...". Formed how? I think you mean something 
about it ought to contain the message id of the precursor. Perhaps you 
meant to say:

   4. If the precursor did not have a References-header (a-6.10), the
      followup's References-content MUST be the MessageID-content of
      the precursor.

Para. 5: The followup agent MUST mail the copy to the "copy-addr"? What if 
the USER decides to mail a copy somewhere else instead? Is the user to be 
told "FOAD"? If not, then the MUST is ridiculous. In fact, MUST is not
appropriate for this, as RFC2119 tells us: there is no "interoperability" 
issue if the poster decides to send a copy somewhere by email other than
the copy-addr. In fact, I would say it is not unreasonable for someone to
always mail themselves a copy of anything they post; that would violate
the MUST of this section.

Similarly, Para. 1, the "MUST NOT" be posted is incorrect. How does a 
user override this prohibition? By saying "post this". How does he post
an article without this? By saying "post this". Since both cases involve
the same action, the MUST NOT is specious, and in any case does not 
involve any interoprability issue necessary for such language.

Section 7.7:

   A reading agent downloads articles from a serving agent, as directed
   by the reader, and displays them (or processes them in some other
   manner).  The article as displayed MUST be identical to the article
   as originally posted, subject only to limitations of the display
   device (such as availability of charsets, etc.). 

Whoa, doggies. Do you really intend to say that the article cannot have
irrelevant or undesired headers left un-displayed? Do you really intend
that the display of the PATH header MUST be as it was originally posted?
Can the reading agent NOT rearrange headers so they are in a specific 
order, can it NOT change the date into the local reader's timezone for his 
convenience? Is displaying the article as originally posted the only thing
we are going to allow reading agents to do? That's going to make a lot of
existing code non-conforming.

                                                   It MUST provide
   facilities for decoding any Content-Transfer-Encodings, encoded-
   words, etc., but SHOULD also have the capability to show the article
   exactly as received.

No, you just said it MUST display the article "as originally posted",
which is not the same as "exactly as received". How can it "SHOULD"
do one thing when you've just said it MUST do another? 

7.8.  Duties of a Moderator

   A Moderator receives news articles by email, 

A moderator receives submissions by some means, not necessarily by email.
Certainly someone has come up with, or will come up with, a web-based
moderation system, and this definition would claim that the person we 
would normally call the moderator is not, because he did not receive the 
articles as specified.

The next paragraph continues the error. If you want to list possible means 
of doing something, ok, but to make an exclusive list is wrong.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 18:07:36 GMT

>Implying it does is incorrect.

The alternative text, which you did not quote, is

   A "followup" is an article containing a response to the contents of
   an earlier article (its "precursor"), or which is otherwise intended
   to be grouped with that article for purposes of display (e.g. as part
   of a multipart posting such as a FAQ).

No, the poster cannot "define" how articles are to be displayed, but he
can indicate his intention in the matter by creating a suitable
References-header, which is all that it says. The particular wording is
based on a suggestion by Forrest, followed by various tweaks that were
discussed here. It may yet get tweaked some more.

The alternative text in a-6.10 is also due to be rewritten with similar
wording. It is still an open issue as to which alternative wording gets
used.

>The alternative I suggested is still better. Why has it never appeared in

You need to explain _why_ your wording is better.

>a followup come but a precursor? There is no reason for the 'alternative'.

If you read the definition, some followups come from precursors and some
come from the poster's display intentions. Followup agents are only
designed to handle the first case, and don't have the necessary capability
to handle the second.

>from". If that is true, just say "copied from" and get rid of the 

No, "copy" would mean "copy the whole header". "Taken" means "copy the
content of the header".

>We still have the extraneous "by default".

If we didn't say "by default", then there would be no latitude for the
poster to override that default.

> We are talking about the duties of the followup agent, which

It says nothing about "giving" the poster anything (that is up to the
implementor of the followup agent). How the overriding is done is not
specified (maybe the user edits those headers in the article he is given,
maybe he is obliged to choose them before composing his article, maybe he
is not given any article at all, because providing the precursor as a
quotation is not obligatory). All that is clear is that if the poster
omits to provide those headers, the "default" is what he gets.

>truth of the matter is ANYTHING MAY be prepended.

NO! The whole point of that wording, and of the compromise thrashed out
between those on my left and those on my right, was that in the *default*
anything other than "Re: " SHOULD NOT be prepended. Remember Seth's four
points?

>      followup's References-content MUST be the MessageID-content of

OK, I'll buy that.

   4. If the precursor did not have a References-header (a-6.10), the
      followup's References-content MUST be copied from the Message-ID-
      content of the precursor. A followup to an article which already
      had a References-header MUST have a References-header comprising
      the precursor's References-content (subject to trimming as
      described below) followed by CFWS and the Message-ID-content of
      the precursor.

>the USER decides to mail a copy somewhere else instead?

Well the whole thing is already within the scope of "(and subject to
manual override by the poster)", so that is covered. The various "SHOULD"s
are meant to cover what the followup agent does in the absence of poster
overrides (like mailing to the poster regardless without taking any notice
of the header or asking the poster). They are SHOULD rather than MUST
because the harm that ensues does not actually break anything - it just
violates the whole intent of the header. But I take your point that a
perverse followup agent which mails to the poster in spite of being told
to use the copy-addr hardly merits a MUST, so I have changed it to SHOULD.

 Is the user to be 

>an article without this?

Again, you have failed to distinguish when the poster chooses to override
the default and when the followup agent (or rather its implementor) does
something stupid. In this case, if the poster takes no action to override
the default, then the agent MUST mail it to the poster and NOT post it.

>existing code non-conforming.

OK, that is new wording, and it may yet disappear entirely. But the "MUST
be identical" is indeed too severe. I have made a note to review it.

>moderation system, ...

No, the rule is that the injection agent MUST mail articles to the
moderator (at his published submission address). If the moderator chooses
to put all sorts of web sites and whatever behind that address, then that
is up to him. Essentially, the boundary of "moderator" starts anywhere on
his side of the submission address.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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