From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 05:11:54 CST
In <40660B84.8060608@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> In <4062F8AB.5010505@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>>
>>>I don't recall agreement about "reinjection". You seem to be the only
>>>person insisting that it should happen. That warrants further discussion.
I am not insisting that it should happen. I am asserting that it DOES
happen (for a variety of reasons - some justifiable and some not). We have
to live with that, and my concern is to make sure that if/when it happens
it is not used as an excuse to rewrite the Injection-Date.
>>
>>
>> The draft has always recognized that, in unusual circumstances, an
>> article can get injected more than once. See for example 5.6.2, 5.6.4,
>> 8.2.1, 8.2.2. This was also discussed on this list when we were talking
>> about the new injection-Date header around a month ago.
>None of those sections defines "reinjection".
5.6.4 speaks of "double-injection" which come to the same thing (I would
probably change that to "reinjection" as part of the change). Likewise
8.2.1 contains the phrase "injected twice". 8.2.2 uses the term
"reinject".
> Of them, only 8.2.2
>make any mention of injection of an already-injected article, and
>it gives no rationale for why that might be reasonable. In the
>discussion recently, I recall that Russ had some concerns about
>your proposals re "reinjection", and you never adequately defined
>circumstances under which injection of an already-injected article
>would be reasonable; i.e. there was no "agreement" about "reinjection".
We discussed various scenarios and I think we agreed that they were
"reasonable", or at least that they were going to happen regardless.
>You can propose defining the term [reinjection]; you can describe situations
> where you think the term is applicable, but we do not yet have agreement
>on either a definition or on such circumstances, and the term is used
>but not defined in the text you proposed.
I have not "proposed a text". I have merely given an outline of what will
be covered in the text when I write it.
Anyway, if you want some further discussion on the circumstances where
reinjection might reasonably occur, here is a first cut of some text that
might go in the draft. However, it is probably the case that the less we
say in the draft, the better, and so this text arguably says too much.
In the normal course of events, an article that has already been
injected into a Netnews network will never pass through another
injecting agent. ...............
Exceptionally, there may be good reasons to reinject an already
injected article, and this standard therefore prescribes the proper way
to do so. Examples of such circumstances include:
. a relaying agent unable to relay an article to its usual peers due to
unanticipated communication problems (for example, an agent on a laptop
that has been physically disconnected from its usual environment) might
attempt instead to reinject it at a site which did not recognize it as
a peer;
. a relaying agent receiving an attelpted relay from a source with
which it did not have a peering agreement might choose to reinject it
instead, in order to fulfil its obligation to the rest of the network
(8.2) to be responsible ...
. there might be a genuine misunderstanding between two sites as to
whether the relationship between them was as peers for relaying, or as
client/server for injecting.
. an article might be gatewayed out of Netnews into some other medium,
and then back again into the same, or a different, Netnews network.
In all such cases, it is up to the receiving agent to detect that the
actual circumstance is consistent with its site policies for
reinjection.
>Then there is a problem with the definition. If "injecting" is
>supposed to mean "either forwards them to a moderator or
>injects them" then the definition is both circular and self-
>contradictory.
The way things currently work (with the exception of a few posting agents
that generate the email to the moderator themselves) is that the
_injecting_agent_ is the one that determines whether to inject the article
immediately, or whether to email it to a moderator (thereby aborting the
injection, as such). That is the way the process is set out in 8.2.2. If
you follow the steps given there, there is no circularity.
>>>What about NNTP-Posting-Date? If it is to be ignored, then there is no
>>>need to say that it MUST be retained.
>If it's not supposed to be generated, then why mandate preservation?
>If it's not used for anything, then it is effectively ignored.
Because it is generally a Bad Thing to remove any header without good
cause. But you may well argue that MUST is a bit strong here. I have made
a note to review this when I come to writing that bit of the text.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5