From: Usenet News Support (support@deathstar.prodigy.com)
Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 10:47:57 CST
On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > 6. I therefore propose the following:
>
> > Agents doing staleness checks SHOULD/MUST use either the
> > composition-date or the injection-date, WHICHEVER IS THE LATER.
>
> I'm reluctant to require both date headers to be parsed when it doesn't
> seem necessary. Why not say that the injection-date should/must be used
> if present, and otherwise the composition-date must be used?
>
> > Injecting agents/moderators/etc SHOULD/MUST include the injection-date
> > in the article if it is more that 24 (72/whatever) hours later than the
> > composition-date and MAY/SHOULD include it regardless.
>
> If we're going to change everything, why not just require it always be
> present? Many servers are already generating NNTP-Posting-Date; we could
> just use that header as-is or just rename it to something else.
Why rename it? It's widely used and all we need do is bless it. My thought
is to not require it if the Date: is usefully correct, but if people want
to require it I'm not adamant about it.
>
> > D. What happens to articles that get injected twice? It is not supposed
> > to happen, except in some rather rare gatewaying situations, and with
> > some particular BOFHish injectors, but it needs to be covered.
>
> Particularly since in practice it happens all the time.
>
> > I suspect the 2nd injector needs to overwrite whatever Injection-Date
> > was present before (which is what we currently prescribe for
> > Injector-Info).
>
> No, if we're using injection-date for the staleness check, it may not ever
> be overwritten or modified, for the same reason that we require the server
> not modify the Date header. Doing anything else breaks Usenet's loop
> detection algorithm and potentially allows reinjection of stale messages.
>
> The choices are accepting the message with the injection-date intact or
> rejecting messages with a user-supplied injection-date.
I think that should be an injector header ONLY. Having that header should
be a reject, for all the reasons you noted.n
-- bill davidsen SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center Project Leader, USENET news http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com Please send usenet-related mail to news-support@prodigy.net