Subject: You can't win!

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:34:51 +0100

USEPRO (now in AUTH48 before release as an RFC) allows email submission to  
moderators either with the Newsgroups header amongst the email headers, or  
with the news article encapsulated entirely within the body of the email  
(a method which has been used by CNEWS and accepted by many/most  
moderators for many years).

USEPRO has added a Content-Type: application/news-transmission to the  
email header for the 2nd (encapsulation) method, the idea being that  
existing moderation software would be MIME-ignorant, ignore that header,  
and treat it just like it always treated CNEWS encapsulated submissions.

Although USEPRO recommends using the first method (since it is better  
supported by current moderation software), it REQUIRES that moderators  
accept both. Nevertheless, I have left my CNEWS working the old way, just  
to monitor how well moderators are tolerating the encapsulated form, and  
to prod them if needs be.

Now I have found two newsgroups where this is not quite working.

1. Newsgroup #1 has correctly implemented recognition of  
application/news-transmission, but regards absence of that, together with  
lack of a Newsgroups header in the email headers, as an indication of  
spam, and sends it to the bit bucket (so discarding CNEWS submissions in  
the old style).

So I upgraded my CNEWS to insert that Content-Type header (so it is now  
USEPRO compliant), but that created another problem:

2. Newsgroup #2 is unaware of application/news-transmission, but has in  
the past accepted the original CNEWS format (and still does, AFAIK).  
However, it is not MIME-ignorant, as we had assumed existing software  
would be. It first interprets the unrecognized  
application/news-transmission as application/octet-stream, and then treats  
application/octet-stream as an indication of a binary, and that newsgroup  
does not accept binaries. Fortunately, it returns the article to the  
sender rather than to the bit bucket, so I immediately became aware of the  
problem. BTW, the moderator of Newsgroup #2 is one tskirvin.

So, as the subject says, You Can't Win :-(

I think the only way forward is for modertors to be encouraged to start  
recognizing application/news-transmission. But perhaps some warning in  
USEPRO might be in order too (which is possible, given we are still in  
AUTH 48).

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