From: Andrew Gierth (andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk)
Date: Wed Sep 29 1999 - 11:44:07 CDT
>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
Charles> Sure there is no technical justification, but current
Charles> practice is not to be ignored.
It is when it exists only for hysterical raisins.
Charles> And there is still software arounf (CNews) that will refuse
Charles> to create groups with UC letters in them.
and it refuses to create groups with >14 char components too - but we've
already been through that.
Nothing requires a site to create groups with uppercase in the name -
and nothing requires maintainers of hierarchies to allow such groups.
But there seems to be no longer any technical justification for
excluding them from the article format.
Charles> Actually, the real justification is to prevent the jokers in
Charles> alt.* from creating lots of groups differeng only in the
Charles> case of their names.
which is no justification at all. Why is that any different to creating
lots of newsgroups differing only in the spelling, or differing only in
some numeric string, or...?
Charles> In a well-regulated hierarchy, the administrators would
Charles> never allow it, of course (but even then, it would be useful
Charles> for Tale to be able to refer to a written rule when refusing
Charles> such requests).
the lack of a written rule has not, in the past, prevented (for
example) the enforcement of the "14-character limit"
Charles> You already know the problems in uk.* trying to deal with
Charles> people who want to do stupid things "just because the
Charles> written rules don't say you can't".
so write it down in the uk.* guidelines, rather than making stupid and
futile attempts to set global policy
-- Andrew.