Subject: Re: Decision: Let's get draft-allbery-usefor-usepro-00 right and publish it as draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-07

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 16:34:53 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]> writes:
>> Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
>>> The situation only gets interesting when the poster themselves has
>>> provided the message ID, which is an entirely different case.

>> It's the interesting case - I don't care about any provisional M-ID used
>> for the communication between the server where the article was
>> submitted, and the moderator(s).  If the first (and only the first)
>> moderator somehow identifies a provisional M-ID he's free to beautify
>> it.  But modifying an original M-ID is utter dubious, and it could cause
>> complete confusion if a later (not the first) moderator starts to modify
>> an already approved M-ID.

>How?  Could you provide some specific examples of what interoperability
>problems you believe could result?  As previously mentioned, cancels are
>not an insolvable issue; cancels of a message in a moderated group have to
>be approved by the moderator anyway, at which point the correct message ID
>can be used.

Yes, but for that to work a moderator would have to keep a list of
original message-ids vs new message-ids, and I can't see many moderators
being willing to go to that trouble.

And then there the posters who try to cancel the message themselves by
Approving it themselves. Naughty, but it's going to happen, as Frank has
said.

Then there are the people who keep records of their own message-ids so
that they can immediately identify followups to their own articles. If
that does not work, then they will perceive it as an interoperability
matter (I don't think you can restrict "interoperability" only to features
specified by the protocol and ignore interoperability with widely
implemented practices - indeed we have already extended it to situations
of that nature).

And then there are people who mail and post their article at the same
time, perhaps to a mailing list, and perhaps in a manner which causes it
to appear in Usenet under its original ID (any maybe that IS a case to be
cuahgt and stopped, but maybe not).

Essentially, it is far far safer to make it clear that miderators 'must'
use the original ID _unless_ they have some very good reason for changing
it, and that is exactly the sort of situation that "SHOULD" was invented
for.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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