Subject: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:53:32 +0200

I don't like the way Charles' suggested text sits in the paragraph.

He suggests that the paragarph start:

3.1.5  Newsgroups

   The Newsgroups header field specifies the newsgroup(s) to which the
   article is posted. It MAY be used in an Email message to
 indicate that it was also posted as an article to those newsgroups,
 but SHOULD NOT be used in Email for any other purpose (such as an
 email-only reply to a News article). Exceptionally, it can also
 appear in an article emailed to a moderator (see [USEPRO]).

This seems to put the email stuff up front. And I think it could be simpler 
without using 2119 language.

I suggest instead adding to the end of the section, after the stuff on the 
non-permitted newsgroup names:

   If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
   message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
   is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
   and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
   moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).

Makes sense?

---

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 13:24:39 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>In this case: "If you claim to follow this standard, you will generate 
>this header under the folllowing circumstances, and you will interpret 
>this header as if the following circumstances had been the reason for its 
>generation".

You are half-right. You can tell people how to generate messages, but when
you know in advance that existing implementations (and current email
standards) call a specific header field undefined and use it in different
incompatible ways in another medium, then telling them that they are
somehow conforming to our standard if they interpret email a specific way
is simply wrong. 

>If you blindly copy headers you don't know the meaning of into the headers 
>of your reply, your email reader is FOOBAR anyway.

That is your opinion. The opinions of those who write email (and news)
clients differ. I've been through this discussion with them already.

>Yes.
>And this misunderstanding will continue to happen no matter what our 
>standard specifies, too.

This is the fallacious "it already happens, it doesn't matter if we make
things worse" argument. If our standard says that the newsgroups header in
email means something specific, it will only make the problem worse
because you are defining it in the worst possible way. It will do nothing
to make the problem better. Being explicit with people and admitting
"don't assume nothin' about this" will help, even if only a little bit.

>Doesn't mean that we shouldn't take a position.

I didn't say we couldn't take a position. Taking a position is saying 
something like "we think it ought to mean Y", not "it means Y". We aren't
in a position to specify what it means. 

>Could you please identify the group working on "posted-and-mailed" (which 
>mailing list, and approximate timeframe, if it was an open group)?

I no longer remember the mailing list address, but it was run by Jacob
Palme, as I recall, and it was a few years ago. Yes, it was an open group,
but it was not a "working group" in the sense of an IETF group. None of
that changes anything I said. How is this constructive? It sounds like
you are questioning the validity of the discussion then because it wasn't
IETF sanctioned.

>> Do we document reality or not?

>We make a standard.

Do we document reality in that news standard or not? 

>In this case, we have two areas of application where the field clearly 
>makes sense to include in email: Gatewayed news messages and messages 
>forwarded to moderators.

That is NOT the opinion of many of the email client authors, nor is it the
way many current clients (even NEWS clients) operate. If you want to
express an opinion in our standard, put it in USAGE or GNKSA. If you want
to specify a meaning for an EMAIL header in EMAIL, get it in RFC2822-new.
It has no place in USEFOR or USEPRO.

>We can choose the same opt-out that we did for References, saying "other 
>messages may use this header; that's OK", or we can say "other messages 
>may use this header; that's broken and their problem".

Or we can use the text I provided. To which I have added a paragraph 
dealing with moderation and assumptions, at the end of this message.

>Hope this is better.

It was.

>You and I apparently have quite different opinions on what the role of a 
>standard is in the face of self-conflicting practice on the Inernet.

You and I apparently have quite different opinions on what constructive
is, as well as civil, as well as the role of a standard that was tasked
with documenting existing practice in the face of undefined and
conflicting uses of a header in a medium that we have zero control over
and no ability to change.

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Exactly. Jacob raised this problem years ago. 

So did I.

>There are basically two
>existing practices (one meaning that this email also sent to the given
>newsgroup, and one meaning the opposite). That is an intolerable
>situation, and the only sensible way to get out of it is to bless one of
>the usages in the standard and deprecate the other. 

Were we truly in charge of the email standards, perhaps this would be
a possible (but not really sensible) way to "get out of the mess".
We do not control email standards, and we cannot change the situation.
Pretending that a large fraction (if not most) of the agents 
generating email replies to news articles do not exist is "smoke and 
mirrors", to use a certain phrase.

>Yes, it will take some while for the "wrong" usage to disappear,

This assumes that those with the wrong usage accept your opinion that
it is wrong. At the virtual heyday of this discussion, they certainly did
not accept that they were wrong; I doubt that a news standard trying to
intrude in email issues today is going to convince them.

Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>The real problems:  If I get unsolicited courtesy copies,
>reply by mail, but later I see that it was no private mail
>but only a courtesy copy, then I'm seriously annoyed.

That was the other side of the issue that we discussed at length in the
old posted-and-mailed group. The main question was: how do I identify the
places to which the message I am reading (either in news or email) has
been sent, so that I may reply in the appropriate places? Unmarked
"courtesy copies" are one manefestation; the other is unposted messages
that contain a Newsgroups header field.

> but an UA adding bogus "Newsgroups:"
> header fields to mails is definitely broken.

It is the same concept that we had in our standard with inheritable
headers. Some headers get copied, some don't. If you don't know what a
header is (like email clients looking at Newsgroups:), do you err on the
side of assuming it has inheritable properties or that it is not
inheritable? Remember, the client is being handed a full news message and
being told to generate a proto-response. It is not adding bogus anything.

>So for that case USEFOR should say that the _presence_ of
>a "Newsgroups:" header field in mail always indicates the
>_intention_ to post+mail.

Yes, we came across that hurdle in the old group, too. Nothing can
identify with certainty that a message was posted and emailed except
seeing it in both news and mail. There is always the possibility that a
news server rejected (or never saw) the article while email accepted it
happily (or vice versa). All you can determine is intent. 

But it clearly does not always indicate such intent exists. I just
prepared an email response to a news article and the third line down in
the header fields of the prototype message was "Newsgroups". This was
using a quite common, reasonably well accepted news agent. Had I actually 
emailed the message, I would not have expressed any intent to post it,
because I had none. My agent would not have tried to post it based on
the existance of that header (even though it DOES send email if I add
a To: header field -- non-orthoganal behaviour, but existing practice.)

Newgroups header fields in email mean exactly nothing, other than the
string "Newsgroups: " appears somewhere in the email message. Nothing we
say can change that; saying anything other than that is misrepresenting
the reality of the net.

  A Newsgroups: header field appearing in email is undefined. Some
  messaging clients leave the Newsgroups header field in email-only
  replies to news messages; some leave the field only in messages intended
  for both posting to news and sending via email. It is impossible to
  determine any useful information about the actual destination(s) of an
  email message that contains the Newsgroups header field from that field,
  since that header field is undefined in email and conflicting use is
  common.

  Email containing unencapsulated submissions to moderated groups may or
  may not contain a Newsgroups header field. It is assumed that email sent
  to a moderated group's submission address (either directly by a user or
  through a news agent) is intended for posting to that group,
  irrespective of any Newsgroups header field the email may contain.  
  Such email sans a Newsgroups header field sent to a submission address
  shared by several moderated groups is undefined behaviour and the result
  is up to the discretion of the moderator.

Whether this text appears in USEFOR, USEPRO, or USAGE is an exercise left
for later discussion. What is important is that we NOT try pretending that
Newsgroups header fields in email are defined any specific way just 
because we want them to be.

---

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:32:57 -0700 (PDT)

Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>If we can't define the semantics of Newsgroups: in mail,
>because this is USEFOR and not MESSFOR, then it's our duty to
>define the semantics of To: and Cc: in news.

We already do. It's called RFC2822 and we refer to it explicitly.