Subject: Re: draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-02

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 08:50:24 -0800 (PST)

Bruce Lilly <blilly@xxxxxxxxx>:

>An author or group of authors may compose some content
>without specifically composing it *for submission to a posting
>agent*. 

That's nice. Also irrelevant. Their "intent" is not the important part of 
that sentence, their ACTION is. And the action is "composes". 

>Sorry, I didn't see where you stated that "poster" corresponds
>to RFC 2822 "sender".  I looked again, and still don't see it.
>Did you use invisible characters?

I said that the poster is the one who posts the article. If you read the
draft you'll notice that the draft says:

   A "sender" is the person or software (usually, but not always, the
   same as the poster) responsible for the operation of the posting
   agent or, which amounts to the same thing, for passing the article to
   the injecting agent.

That's posting.

If A=B and B=C, then A=C. 

>No, I'm not arguing.  I am confirming as fact what you said
>you "thought" happened, and stated that "poster" (as used
>in text, not as a keyword) corresponds to RFC 2822 "sender".

No, "poster" as used in the draft does NOT correspond to RFC2822 "sender".
It ought to, but as it currently is written, it does not. That's why I
brought it up.

---

From: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 20:17:57 -0500

> that sentence, their ACTION is. And the action is "composes". 

But you still mixed up posting with authoring -- an author might
use a posting agent to prepare an article specifically for news,
or a message prepared by one or more authors might be submitted
by a poster to an injection agent, but one does not submit articles
to a posting agent, at least not as that term is defined in the draft.
 
> It ought to, but as it currently is written, it does not. That's why I

Yes, we're agreed that the draft is in error and that the reality
(as reflected in earlier WG discussion but not reflected in the
draft text) is that the poster corresponds to the RFC 2822
sender.

Separate from the issue of the "poster" keyword in the
Followup-To header field (as mentioned by Sebastian Brocks),
which does not necessarily refer to the poster or the author(s).
We could mention that oddity as an historical artifact, and/or
we could plan a strategy for correcting the unfortunate
mistake (long-term; keeping the term for backwards
compatibility).

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:16:14 GMT

>draft text) is that the poster corresponds to the RFC 2822

The word "poster" as actually used in our draft means either "author" or
"sender", and in most cases means both. Where the distinctin is important
we can and do use more precise wording. So please draw attention to cases
where there might still be problems.

I agree that the definition may need to be cleaned up, but let us identify
any problematic cases before doing that.

>mistake (long-term; keeping the term for backwards

The word "poster" is in widespread usage throughout usenet and does not
seem to cause any real problems out there, and there would be nothing at
all to be gained trying to use anything else as the special keyword in the
Followup-To header.

-- 
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