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

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 08:30:57 -0700 (PDT)

Seth Breidbart <sethb@xxxxxxxxx>:

>> If he cannot control it, his intention of controlling it is
>> irrelevant.

>Not to me, as a reader.

If you think you have some control, then you are ill informed. What you
intend is nice, and it is nice that you think it is important to you, but 
your intention really is irrelevant, since there is no means for you to
accomplish what you want.

>While I don't _have to_ display anything the
>way the poster wants, I will often _choose_ to _defer to_ the poster's
>wishes.

It's nice that you "choose" to defer, since you actually have no choice
in the matter. If the user wants to display your message in 1 pt font in
red blinking letters, there isn't anything you can do to stop it.

>An expectation that is fulfilled, say, 98% of the time is far from
>"foolish".

An expectation based on SWAG numbers, with no mechanism to accomplish it
in the first place, is foolish.

>The "display intentions" are not irrelevant to me, as a reader,

That's nice. Too bad you don't have a choice.

>because my newsreader adheres to them 99.9+% of the time (that is, I
>seldom bother to override its defaults).

Oh, I see where you get your SWAG number. YOUR newsreader shows you things 
the way YOU want them 99% of the time, thus everyone elses shows them 
things the way you want them 99% of the time. Sorry, no. I bet mine 
doesn't show them your way even 1% of the time. Your average is down to
50%, and that's just after considering two readers. 

The fact remains: poster "intentions" on how messages are displayed, or in
what order, are irrelevant simply because the expectation of control is
specious. Better to teach people the truth than give them false
expectations, which will lead them to come here expecting their intentions
to be codified in the standard, as we are now seeing happen.

---

From: Seth Breidbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 13:11:39 -0400 (EDT)

> If you think you have some control, then you are ill informed.

What part of "me, as a reader" didn't you understand?  The last word?

> What you intend is nice, and it is nice that you think it is
> important to you, but your intention really is irrelevant, since
> there is no means for you to accomplish what you want.

When I post, I _intend_ that others read my post.  Obviously, I can't
enforce that; does that mean that transmission of posts should be
blocked entirely?

When I post a followup in response to a specific article, with a
References header, am I indicating that my article is part of a
thread, or am I indicating my intention that my article be treated as
part of that thread?

>>While I don't _have to_ display anything the way the poster wants, I
>>will often _choose_ to _defer to_ the poster's wishes.
>
> in the matter.

As the _reader_, I have _all_ the choice.

> That's nice. Too bad you don't have a choice.

But I do.

> things the way you want them 99% of the time.

No, their newsreader shows them things the way they want.

> Sorry, no. I bet mine doesn't show them your way even 1% of the
> time. Your average is down to 50%, and that's just after considering
> two readers.

Really?  If I put a References header into a new article, your
newsreader (as you have it configured) won't show my article as part
of the thread containing the messages referred to in that References
header?

And you think a significant fraction of other readers have their
newsreaders configured similarly?

> The fact remains: poster "intentions" on how messages are displayed,
> or in what order, are irrelevant simply because the expectation of
> control is specious.

Let's remove the Newsgroups header, too, then, for the same reason.

Seth

---

From: Eivind Tagseth <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 20:25:22 +0200

> thread, or am I indicating my intention that my article be treated as

You are indicating that your article and the article with the last
message id in the References header has a child-parent relationship.
Furthermore, you're saying that all message ids in the References header
have an ancestry relationship to your article.  And you're saying that
the very first message id in the References header is the very first
message of this ancestry lineage.

I guess this isn't quite correct, as the References header may also contain
message ids that are not decendants of the very first article (when
replying to two different articles as once), or doesn't this ever
happen?

Isn't this what the references header really means?  How to display
the article in a news reader isn't really that relevant, the natural
way to display articles having such relations comes from the meaning
of the header, not vice versa.

Are we really not able to describe the semantics of the references
header without doing it backwards by describing the ui rather
than the meaning.

Eivind

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 23:02:47 GMT

>replying to two different articles as once), or doesn't this ever

We have explicitly said we do not cover the case of followups to multiple
articles, and RFC 2822 says much the same thing for email. OTOH, if you do
make such a followup and manually create a References-header in a
plausible way, then most current threading agents will probably manage to
do something sensible with it.

>of the header, not vice versa.

I think the two things go hand in hand. There would be little point in
having the References header if it were not intended to be used for
threading.

>header without doing it backwards by describing the ui rather

But I agree that some semantics in the USEFOR document would be a good
addition to the detailed instructions in USEPRO as to how to contruct it,
and I intend to look into this.

-- 
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.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 14:09:49 +0200

Charles Lindsey wrote:

> There would be little point in having the References header
> if it were not intended to be used for threading.

Depends, my UA certainly uses it for threading, but it also
displays the "References:" in a way suited for a "See-Also:"
literal meaning of references.  Especially if I select its
"options -> show headers -> brief".

Of course both attempts (threading and "See-Also:") can fail,
and the main purpose of references from my POV is threading.

                        Bye, Frank

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 12:04:27 GMT

>"options -> show headers -> brief".

Yes, I sometimes look at the References header if I want to view some
precursor in its un-snipped form.

>and the main purpose of references from my POV is threading.

But yes, the "main purpose" is threading.