From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2004 - 05:32:06 CDT
In <Pine.LNX.4.21.0406031550220.13923-100000@deathstar.prodigy.com> Usenet News Support <support@deathstar.prodigy.com> writes:
>On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>Since the list is once again not accepting my messages, feel free to quote
>this. The damn list is required to be open, I don't know why it
>isn't! Sometimes it works, more often it doesn't.
Ah! Now we know how to get a message past the Lanfield filter. Just
include a paragraph complaining about the filter. I have several other messages
that Bill CCed to me and have not appeared on the List, so I have copied
them below, with my responses.
[Bruce: When you spoke to Kent on the telephone, did you enquire about his
strange filtering strategies, or did you just concentrate on getting his
machine turned on again?]
>> OK, so that is now the official text, except that I have added one word
>> "can":
>>
>> It would be wiser for any followup agents which can detect apparent non-
>> standard back-references such as "Re(2): ", "Sv: ", etc. to refrain
>> from prepending anything further, but other attempts to mend that
>> problem are likely to do more harm than good.
>I offer again the suggestion that a back reference (or potential BR) be
>defined as "any sequence of non-blank characters ending in a colon and
>followed by a blank." That would give some false positives, they clearly
>don't hurt if Re: is not added as long as the References header is
>present, and will detect all examples I've seen in this list so far.
I think the problem of false positives would be too severe. But there is
nothing to stop some reading agent implementor trying it if he wants to.
Just that we don't want to place him in the position where he thinks he is
"expected" to do more than "Re: ".
Here are the other texts that I received from Bill, but which don't appear
to have made it to the List.
>Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:02:55 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Usenet News Support <support@deathstar.prodigy.com>
>Reply-To: News Support <news@sbcis.sbc.com>
>To: Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>
>cc: usenet-format@landfield.com
>Subject: Re: Back-references and USEAGE
>
>On Fri, 21 May 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>> >I don't think there's really any call for the word 'perverse' there...
>a
>> >Subject-header starting with "Re: " is perfectly legitimate, after all.
>>
>> Yes, perhaps that it a bit OTT, although it does represent the
>actualité.
>> I don't think anyone has ever seen a Subject starting with "Re: " unless
>> it has been autamatically generated, or it was a poster genuinely trying
>> to join an ongoing discussion, or it was some show-off trying to be
>> "clever".
>
>Wrong. My spam filter flags "Re:" without a References header as a one
>point item, and I see it in logs regularly, perhaps 4-5 times a week. It's
>not unheard of, just uncommon.
But how many of those were people doing "manual followups", i.e. joining
an existing thread with a manually inserted "Re: ", but not using a
followup agent and not responding to a particular precursor?
>Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 13:45:16 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Usenet News Support <support@deathstar.prodigy.com>
>Reply-To: News Support <news@sbcis.sbc.com>
>To: Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>
>cc: usenet-format@landfield.com
>Subject: Re: Back-references and USEAGE
>
>On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>> In <20040531184532.GD3152@tagseth-trd.consultit.no> Eivind Tagseth
><eivindt@multinet.no> writes:
>>
>> >* Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> [2004-05-31 11:39:17 +0000]:
>>
>> >> In <20040529003448.GB836@tagseth-trd.consultit.no> Eivind Tagseth
><eivindt@multinet.no> writes:
>> >> >Ok, I agree, the term "recognize" is wrong. But I still don't see
>the
>> >> >damage in _guessing_ if the start of the subject is (or rather: was)
>a
>>
>> >> Would s/recognize/detect/ help?
>>
>> >No, the point is that it is not possible to tell if the subject of an
>> >article contains a back-reference or not (depending on the definition
>of
>> >a back-reference of course), or if "Re: " is written by the user,
>having a
>> >completely different meaning than a back-reference. The newsreader
>> >can only _guess_.
>>
>> Ah! In that case they have found an "apparent" back-reference. How about
>> the following:
>>
>> It would be wiser for any followup agents which detect apparent non-
> ^^^^^^^^
> possible
>> standard back-references such as "Re(2): ", "Sv: ", etc. to refrain
>> from prepending anything further, but other attempts to mend that
>> problem are likely to do more harm than good.
>>
Possibly :-) .
But no, I still think "apparent" conveys the correct meaning, and Eivind
was happy with it, so I prefer to leave it as is unless others feel
strongly.
This next one is really off topic for this thread because it deals with
the USEFOR text. But here goes anyway ...
>Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 15:34:48 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Usenet News Support <support@deathstar.prodigy.com>
>Reply-To: News Support <news@sbcis.sbc.com>
>To: Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>
>cc: usenet-format@landfield.com
>Subject: Re: Followups and back-references
>In-Reply-To: <HyqM81.I13@clerew.man.ac.uk>
>
>On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>> Well, of course in USEAGE it does say that. But that being the major way
>in
>> which reading agents actually utilize "Re: ", then singling it out here
>> for mention could be a way forward. So how about the following sentence
>in
>> the middle of the NOTE?
>>
>> Some reading agents take note of the Subject-header (as well as
>> other headers) when presenting articles for display (again, see
>> [USEAGE]) and such agents find it necessary to ignore such a
>> "Re: " when comparing subjects.
>
>s/necessary/desirable/
Yes, that might help. The relevant sentence would then read:
Some reading agents take note of the Subject-header (as well as
other headers) when presenting articles for display (again, see
[USEAGE]) and such agents find it desirable to ignore such a
"Re: " when comparing subjects.
-- 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