From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 10:15:15 CDT
Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> proposed:
> On Thu, 31 May 2001, Peter Alfredsen wrote:
> > Ok, I have pieced this together from the other proposed wordings...
>
> Generally seems good. It needs to say what the default is, presumably "yes".
> Also:
>
> > The poster of an article must not expect that any post marked with
> > "Archive: no" will not be made available in one form or another, on
> > or off USENET.
>
> Right thought, but the wording is a bit clumsy. I'd suggest:
>
> It is unwise to assume that merely marking an article with
> "Archive: no" will reliably prevent it from being made available
> in a long-lived public form; indicating your wishes does not
> guarantee that they will be respected.
I like the original better, for what that's worth. But if you change
"It is unwise to assume" to something like "Authors should not assume"
(or posters) it would be okay. And "merely" seem to add nothing, the
wording reads fine without it. I don't believe we should comment on
wisdom in a standard, or to be needlessly verbose.
So:
It is unwise to assume that merely marking an article with
"Archive: no" will reliably prevent it from being made available
in a long-lived public form; indicating your wishes does not
guarantee that they will be respected.
might become:
Authors should not assume that including an "Archive: no" header
in a post will reliably prevent it from being made available
in a long-lived public form; indicating your wishes does not
guarantee that they will be respected.
That's my read on it, while I was rereading I decided that "marking an
article" was a roundabout way of saying "incude the header" so I said
it.
While I'm at it:
The date= option allows an author to specify a date after which the
article should no longer be available from public archives. This may not
be the same as the date after which is is no longer available from the
normal news spool, if any, which is controlled by site policy and the
advisory "Expires" header.
Now everyone can shoot at my wording.
-- -bill davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com) "The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the last possible moment - but no longer" -me