Subject: #1008 USEFOR 1.5 References: Final text on "followup"

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 10:20:49 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>...the text that seems to come closest to capturing the (VERY) rough 
>consensus of the group is:

This is a technical standard. A consensus to be wrong is still wrong.

> Unless there are technical issues that have not been raised before,

The existing one is sufficient. When did we get to vote on changing the
meaning of RFC2822?

> ...the definition of "followup" is now closed.

Just to make it clear, the official position of this working group is that 
RFC2822 doesn't say what it does, that mandates based on "we want" are 
appropriate despite RFC2119, and that the ability to detect followups is
not important.

I'll also point out that your "definition" is really just the first 
sentence. The second sentence is not definition, especially when you note 
that the attribute you are using to define followup is also present in 
non-followups. You might as well leave the second sentence out; it means 
nothing and is the cause of the problem.

---

From: Henry Spencer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:07:19 -0400 (EDT)

> This is a technical standard. A consensus to be wrong is still wrong.

However, the mere fact that someone says the consensus is wrong doesn't
make it so.

> RFC2822 doesn't say what it does...

No, only that RFC 2822 -- a mail standard -- doesn't entirely apply to
news, or won't until 2822 is revised to be less mail-centric.  (It's
better than it was, but still needs work.)

> that mandates based on "we want" are appropriate despite RFC2119...

Defining the format and semantics of news articles is our job, and it is
appropriate for us to do it.

> and that the ability to detect followups is not important.

Correct, it's not.  The ability to detect intended relationships between
articles is important -- that's what References is for -- but deciding
whether those relationships came about because an article is a followup
to another is not.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       [email-masked]