From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Wed Oct 04 2000 - 12:56:04 CDT
Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk) writes:
"The Newsgroups header is defined in a News standard. So we get to say what
it means."
In news. In mail it can and does, through historical precedent, mean
something else.
"Anyway, there is no problem. If the Newsgroup header appears in an email
alongside a Posted-And-Mailed header, then it is absolutely clear what it
means."
It is still not a certainty, but it is probably close enough.
Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com) writes:
"But again, if we want these CCs, we request them, in which case one
presumes we want to read them, right? "
Brad apparently has never run accross anyone who feels that what they
have written in a news followup is so important that it must also be
delivered to someone's mailbox.
People CC news articles for all sorts of reasons, only ONE of which is
that the author requested it.
"... why not just arrange so that the same message-id is used for both?"
What value does this provide? Are you assuming that the email address one
uses to post is delivered to a system where the user reads news? How is
a user reading mail on a system that has no access to news going to
make use of the message id to look up a news article?
Are you assuming that the recipient wants to deal with news on the same
priority that he deals with mail? Is he supposed to deal with news
discussions just because someone thought his words were earth-shattering
enougn to require a CC through mail?
Of course a combined message should have the same message id, but that's
because it is the same message. It doesn't solve the problem of
determining if a received mail message was also posted to news or to what
group(s) it was posted.
Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se) writes:
"But I believe most people put information they want other people
to see in the body."
Other information related to the discussion at hand. "This message was
posted to ... and mailed to ..." is rarely relevant to the discussion. It
is something that few people think of adding when they fill in the To:
header in a trn-generated followup.
Since the news agent knows what it is doing with the message, it is the
best place to make sure that the actions are recorded. Since it should
NEVER play games with the body, the header is the only place left to
record this information.
"Nah, I assume that he knows which newsgruops he has posted to,"
How, pray tell, is someone supposed to know to which groups you posted a
message unless there is a header telling them? So what if you know what
groups YOU posted to, when the issue is someone you've CC'd the message to
knowing?
"The blurb will need to be there forever. "
The "blurb" should never be there. It's time to squash all these agents
that think that adding content to messages in the body is the right thing
to do. It's forgery.