Subject: Angels, pins, 2142 and 2119

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 10:23:21 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>- RFC 2142 is, largely, a failed standard. Most sites do not claim 
>conformance to it now, most sites won't claim conformance to it in the 
>future.

It is, however, the existing standard in the area. If it is ignored, then
there is zero reason to believe that our rewrite into USEFOR output will 
be any less ignored. Smoke, mirrors, and changing reality, eh? Who's 
trying to do that now?

>- RFC 2119 is a guideline, and was written in English, not mathematical 
>language.

It is a guideline the we explicitely claim to be following. Guideline or
rock-hard standard irrelevant, when we say we use the terms the same way
and then routinely ignore it, we are lying.

>Please choose a more constructive style of debate in the future; battering 
>each other with "the only possible way to read this paragraph is FOO, 
>therefore you can/cannot recommend BAR" is Just Not Helpful.

Please provide a reference for the quote. Or anything close to it.

>Anyway, most of the real arguments in that thread are now completely moot, 
>given that the group has consensus to not mandate anything about email 
>addresses in the USEPRO document.

Sigh. I guess red really is blue. 

>The USEPRO document will not say MUST or SHOULD about any of the addresses 
>"abuse@identity", "usefor@identity" or "news@identity".

So we get to go through the whole thing again when USAGE is brought up.
Fine. Maybe the consensus will change betwixt now and thence.