Subject: Protocol Action: 'Netnews Article Format' to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:22:08 -0500

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Netnews Article Format '
   <draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Usenet Article Standard Update 
Working Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Lisa Dusseault and Ted Hardie.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12.txt

Summary

This document specifies the syntax of Netnews articles in the context
of the "Internet Message Format" (RFC 2822) and "Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (MIME)" (RFC 2045). This document obsoletes
the mesasge format parts of RFC 1036, providing an updated specification
to reflect current practice and incorporating incremental changes
specified in other documents. The document also adds several new header
fields that replace various non-standard and non-interoperable header
fields in use in Usenet today.

This is the first in a set of documents that obsolete RFC 1036. This
document focuses on the syntax and semantics of Netnews articles.

Another document describes protocol issues of Netnews articles
independent of transport protocols, e.g. control articles.

And yet another document describes policy related issues,
interoperability and usability related recommendations.

Process and goals history of this draft.

The USEFOR WG started its efforts to update RFC 1036 about 9 years ago.
Several email related standards got published and updated in this
timeframe.
Several WG chairs have changed since then, and many WG participants left
or joined the WG (mostly left).

In May 2004, this document was a part of the 98-page
draft-ietf-usefor-article-13.txt. Following the proposal of Pete
Resnick, WG chair at the time, the document got split into 2 documents:
draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-00.txt and draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-00.txt.

Following feedback from the WG members, Alexey Melnikov asked Ken
Murchison to edit draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-xx.txt instead of Charles
Lindsey, taking a more concise draft (draft-kohn-news-article-03.txt) by
Dan Kohn as the base.
Ken Murchison became the primary editor, while Charles Lindsey and Dan
Kohn got
listed as co-editors of the draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-00.txt document.

While the split and new primary editor helped to move things forward,
this was not sufficient to get the document finished.

In April 2005, Harald Alvestand joined as co-chair of the WG. He
introduced issue tracker to the WG, which helped to prevent people from 
reraising old issues again and again. He also on one occasion suspended 
posting rights of one of the abusive WG members, which helped reduce the 
personal attacks in the group.

draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-10.txt is the result of a WG Last Call in April
2006 (which raised several issues, none of them requiring major changes)
and a call for consensus on the resolution of Last Call comments in
September 2006.

This draft is being submitted for Proposed Standard.

The USEFOR WG has reviewed the draft, last-call (and post last-call)
reviews included:
- Frank Ellermann
- Russ Allbery
- Richard Clayton
- Ralph Babel
- Forrest J. Cavalier III
- Seth Breidbart
- Dan Schlitt

Of the reviewers, two argued that the group should be disbanded and the
draft ditched. 
 
Protocol Quality
 
 Lisa Dusseault reviewed this document for the IESG.

---

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 07:07:00 -0500

Congratulations on finally getting this document finished!

-Scott- 
(former USEFOR area advisor)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: The IESG [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 4:22 PM
> To: IETF-Announce
> Cc: usefor mailing list; Internet Architecture Board; usefor 
> chair; RFC Editor
> Subject: Protocol Action: 'Netnews Article Format' to 
> Proposed Standard 
>

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:45:36 +0100

>    <draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12.txt> as a Proposed Standard
[...]
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12.txt

Great.  How about updating the WG Charter now ?  I'd like to add the
I-D about news and nntp URIs, if that could help to settle the two
(I think) remaining objections by Charles:

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.org.w3c.uri/970

If I got it right he'd prefer to specify a new "range" syntax for
nntp-URLs, while I'd prefer to stick to the RFC 1738 syntax, because
one "message" of RFC 1738, draft-gilman, and draft-hoffman (continued
in the actual I-D) was always that news-URLs are better than nntp-URLs
for various reasons.  Which isn't the point where I'd wish to add new
features not supported by existings UAs (as far as they support this
scheme at all), even if it should be easy to implement it in new UAs.

His second objection is about the "new" (3977) <wildmat> construct,
he wants news-URLs to allow the complete wildmat syntax with "!" and
",", while I want only "*" and the percent-encoded "?" as a "minimal"
superset of Gilman's old news-URL draft.  Actually the same concerns
as for nntp-ranges, Charles wants to support all new NNTP features if
they're low-hanging fruits, I want maximum backwards compatibility
with Gilman's I-D and common practice.

To some degree it's a matter of taste, and the feedback I got so far
is somewhat limited, most folks are happy with deprecating snews, two
contributors submitted nits (fixed) otherwise supporting the I-D as is,
and one contributor wanted the "*" as it now is (in an earlier draft I
tried to get away with the original 1738 idea of either group or "*").

Any opinions here ?  The old 2004 WG Charter mumbles something about:

| The Group shall also aid and/or oversee the production of other
| Usenet related Internet Drafts and Standards.

Frank

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 12:28:15 GMT

>(I think) remaining objections by Charles:

Please, no charter updates! We have enough on our plate.

And no new projects. The URIs are really a matter for the [email-masked] list
(or maybe for the now dormant NNTP list, if Russ agrees). And no, I have
other objections to your draft, but as matters of style rather than
protocol.

-- 
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: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:58:58 +0000

>Please, no charter updates! We have enough on our plate.
(chair hat on)
There would be no new documents in the charter until both USEPRO and 
USEAGE are done.

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:31:48 -0800

Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]> writes:

> And no new projects. The URIs are really a matter for the [email-masked]
> list (or maybe for the now dormant NNTP list, if Russ agrees).

I'm happy to have them be discussed there.  As far as I'm concerned, the
ietf-nntp list is available for discussion of any NNTP-related protocol
issues that people feel it would be appropriate for.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>