Subject: Re: #1008 USEFOR 1.5: Suggested language on "followup"

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 09:42:40 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>I have deliberately not discussed USEPRO. I believe that we can do one 
>thing at a time.

You are wrong. You must consider the effects of USEFOR on USEPRO and vice 
versa. We must discuss them together, because they are intended to be 
implemented together.

>...people are currently using the References: header in messages that can 
>only be called "followup" by a rather stretched definition of that term,

Here's how far it has to be stretched: add "or as a result of". Not very 
far, and it is exactly how people are treating it today. It is current 
practice. Why is documenting current practice suddenly "rather stretched"?

>I disagree with your statement about RFC 2822.

You are free to disagree, but only one of us can be right. Do you have a
section of RFC2822 that says that References is EVER mandatory in a
message? I don't think so. I have one that says it is optional in replies,
and I have a section of USEFOR that says we defer to RFC2822 for
References.

>I'll let current practitioners speak for themselves.

I'm happy to observe current practice and discuss it. If current 
practitioners (other than ourselves, who can also be current 
practitioners) don't want to come here, they don't have to.

>The others can speak for themselves, too.

Yes, and they are. But RFCs do not have a voice of their own, so someone 
has to speak up for them.

---

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 12:50:21 -0700 (PDT)

Seth Breidbart <sethb@xxxxxxxxx>:

>"Thread it" isn't necessarily a display issue. 

It is only a display issue. Nothing in the news system cares how an 
article is threaded other than the display agent.

>That makes the assumption that "followup" iff "contains References
>header".  We voted against that assumption.  Deal with it.

We have no authority to vote out sections of RFC1036, which is the current
RFC dealing with news. Currently, the standard says "required/prohibited".
There is no "please display this article this way" header; References
deals only with expressing followup relationships. Thus, the poster cannot
possibly be saying "please display me this way", or even "please thread me
as if I were a followup", because there is no header that expresses that
sentiment.

>But based on both the vote here and reality, the poster is _not_
>calling the article a followup,

No vote here can change why a poster called his article a followup (or
that he did so), and the current standard says that his article MUST be a
followup -- otherwise it is not a valid article, and invalid articles are
outside the scope of our standard. Invalid articles are not supposed to be
transported, much less processed as if they said "display this article
this way".

>> All we know is that he DID call it a followup for some reason
>> because it contains a header that is allowed only in followups.

>We voted otherwise.

Link to proof? Link to authority to vote out existing standards?