From: Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com)
Date: Mon Mar 06 2000 - 17:11:05 CST
On Mon, Mar 06, 2000 at 04:47:23PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> wrote:
> > I am frankly astounded that you think clients would want to do this.
>
> I'm pretty surprised that you didn't know that it's already being done,
> so I guess neither of us is omnipitent.
I fail to see how alt.anonymous.messages matches what I describe.
Are there signatures and certificates in the overveiw file for this group?
Are there newsreaders which check them and only display the messages signed
by people who have a certificate chain leading back to somebody I have
declared trust for? Are there newsreaders which maintain a certificate
database and a CRL and automatically update it? I don't see any of
this going on.
>
> You still seem to have read something that makes you think I want to
> forbid servers from filtering, when all I said was that it works even if
> they don't.
No, I didn't say that. What I do say that it is wrong to spec
support for filtering by clients, because it is a large burden on the
clients. That it is much harder for clients to do it than servers is
a simple statement of fact.
The value judgement I made is that it would be wrong to even suggest it
as an alternative because I don't want each party to punt the duty to the
other. I don't want server owners to say, "let the clients do it" while
newsreader authors say "let the server do it."
I think it is the function of standards bodies to decide which is the best
place and to say it SHOULD be done there, even MUST be done there, to
avoid the buck-passing which results in it not being done.
If that is playing god, it is what standards bodies do. Choose between two
alternatives so that everybody else doesn't have to.
In this case, however, one alternative is so much vastly superior to the
other.
>
> > If a newsreader is going to check a header, and it's the sort of header
> > you need to decide whether to show the user a headline, it has to be in
> > the overview or it's not going to be practical.
>
> Again, the existance of a working group without header support sure
> makes it look practical. I'd rather have it in the server, but I do
> filter some groups based on article body content. I don't like it, but I
> do it.
If you think alt.anonymous.messages is an example of what I describe, I
am afraid I either seriously misunderstand the newsgroup or you don't
understand what I'm discribing.