From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Jan 12 2000 - 05:42:13 CST
In <387B5203.4535B6E2@visi.com> Dave Barr <barr@visi.com> writes:
>Hm.. I hadn't thought of this in these terms before. I too have
>been annoyed at the proliferation of newsgroups that clearly are the
>result of typos of valid newsgroups.
>However, should a relay trash an article because one newsgroup is
>bad or only because all newsgroups are invalid? Unfortunately,
>most of the newsgroups get auto-created out of "traffic" because of
>crossposts to typo'd newsgroups. I see no way to avoid this, except
>to try outlaw the practice of auto-creation based on traffic to
>crossposted newsgroups.
The principle we have always accepted elsewhere in the draft is that if
just one of the newsgroup-names is recognised as valid, then you pass it
on. In fact there is a paragraph in 5.5 to the effect that relaying agents
MUST NOT rewrite the Newsgroups header in any way, even if they recognise
none of the groups (their only option is that case is presumably not to relay
the article at all).
OTOH, I thought we had a prohibition of autocreation, but I cannot find
it. I have now added a sentence at the proper place in 5.5:
Serving agents MUST NOT create new newsgroups simply because an
unrecognised newsgroup-name occurs in a Newsgroups header (see 7.1 for the
correct method of newsgroup creation).
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506 Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5