From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Sat Aug 11 2001 - 01:10:37 CDT
Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
> The current NNTP draft recognises 'y', 'm' and 'n' in the LIST ACTIVE
> command; no mention of 'x' or '=newgroup'. It that were rectified, then
> there could indeed be a return code to POST that says "refused because
> the active file says 'xxxx'" (where 'xxxx' would include the name of the
> newgroup - or indeed any other nonstandard string).
It doesn't belong in the current draft IMO. It's certainly something that
could be added in a future document, though.
> Yes, but first you have to decide whether what I described amounts to an
> "experimental protocol",
I think it does.
> My problem with an "experimental protocol" in this case is that if our
> standard does not bless it in even such a rudimentary form, nobody is
> going to take any notice of the eventual 'mvgroup' RFD because they will
> say "why should we (hierarchy admins) bother using this new header when
> we know of no sites supporting it"; at the same time, sites will not be
> implementing it because "no hierarchy admins are using it".
If it's not persuasive enough new functionality for people to implement it
as an experimental protocol, it's not worth anyone's time to work on and
we should devote our limited resources to things that people are more
excited about.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>