From: Usenet News Support (support@deathstar.prodigy.com)
Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 12:44:33 CST
On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
> 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?
>
> I agree, for a different reason. Computer-illiterate users often have
> the date set incorrectly, and it is not unknown to have forged Date
> header fields. If there is an injection-date, that is what should be
> used.
And very savvy people often set their dates back because software licenses
expire. There are lots of reasons, mostly not good, including hardware. I
actually own a system which got the year wrong through all of 2000 and
then worked fine after that. Agreed that if the NNTP_Posting-Date is
present it should be used.
>
> > 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.
>
> I'd prefer a more generic name, but I don't object to use of NNTP-Posting-Date
> as an alternative, i.e. the order of fields to use would be <name-to-be-determined>,
> NNTP-Posting-Date, Date.
Why? Many systems have NNTP-Posting-Date, there are no competing or
non-conforming uses for the field, what benefit do you see from
introducing another field?
The idea of a new field to do the same thing as an existing field is
hereby rejected by the department of redundancy department.
> > The choices are accepting the message with the injection-date intact or
> > rejecting messages with a user-supplied injection-date.
>
> If there is a header field with an injection date, it should be a hint
> to an injection agent that re-injection may be taking place. What should
> gateways do with such a field?
Reject the POST. If there is a legitimate reason to do such a thing the
poster should bear the responsibility for doing it right.
-- 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