From: Eivind Tagseth (eivindt@multinet.no)
Date: Thu Apr 01 2004 - 05:07:16 CST
* John Stanley <stanley@peak.org> [2004-03-31 11:53:08 -0800]:
> Eivind Tagseth (eivindt@multinet.no):
>
> >There seems to be several standpoints about this:
>
> > 1. Create the specification as it should ideally be (i.e. no back
> > reference in the subject), and hope that most people will
> > upgrade to a conforming newsreader as soon as possible.
>
> I don't think anyone is making this argument. I don't recall anyone
> saying "prohibit it".
(Actually, someone did talk about prohibiting it for articles without a
reference header). Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly enough. What
I meant was that there should be no automatically addition of the
back-reference. See more below.
> You've left out the simplest option: don't specify any structure in an
> unstructured header. "Prohibit it" or "require it" are not the entire
> spectrum.
It's not my intent to specify structure in the subject header. I'd like
the protocol specification to specify that the subject header is
unstructured. I'd also like a note explicitly saying that any back-reference
(such as "Re: ") is not part of the protocol.
For USEAGE, there should be a more detailed description of back-references
and how they should be used and not used.
Eivind