From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Fri Nov 02 2001 - 18:06:14 CST
Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk):
> Then you configure your newsreader so that you don't get handed Y.
My newsreader has no such configuration option. None of the ones I know of
do.
> Why should the FAQ writer care if you want to bury your head in the
> sand?
Why is the expectation that you get article X when you ask for article X
"burying your head in the sand?" Do you feel better by being insulting?
> The message you asked to see is no longer there (it has been cancelled).
No, it was replaced. Please keep your story consistent.
> So you either see nothing,
The proper action.
> or you see the replacement.
Like I said, you see a DIFFERENT message than the one you asked for; one
that may have no real connection to the old one at all.
> It is your choice,
Not if the server decides to send a different message than the one I ask
for. I shouldn't have to test to see if the response message is the same
as the one I want, the server should do that and not waste the bandwidth
sending something I didn't ask for.
> You mean that an author who says "this is a repost of the identical
> article" is not being "intelligent"?
Nice twist of my words. I said he could not intelligently make that
decision for you. No, even if the article is identical, he cannot
intelligently decide if you want to see it or not.
Forrest J. Cavalier III (mibsoft@epix.net):
> The intended use, replacing FAQs, is unlikely to
> be much benefit.
Right. Supersedes is the existing header which deals with this. Remove the
old, keep the new. End of problem.
> For individual readers who wish to revise a post,
Supersedes is still the header to use. It already exists. The article
shows up for all to see that the author is changing what he said, not
trying to hide his changes.
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz (Shmuel@acm.org):
> Here's one vote for still useful.
Explain precisely what use it has that is not met by existing headers and
newsreaders. "I can't remember how to spell 'supersedes'" is not
sufficient justification. (I won't even ask how something can "still [be]
useful" when it doesn't exist yet.)