From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed May 05 2004 - 05:21:52 CDT
I am forwarding this for Frank Ellerman because the majordomo at
landfield.com does not like his "nobody@" address (which is actually
genuine). I tried this first as a resend, but that was not good enough
apparently).
------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Frank Ellermann" <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de>
To: "Charles Lindsey" <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Achieving consensus
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 18:22:02 +0200
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 1. The Subject header should be initialized based on that of
> the parent article.
Yes.
> 2. Copying the Subject header exactly is an acceptable
> initialization.
Maybe. At least better than "random string" or "void".
> 3. If the Subject header of the parent does not being with
> "Re: " then prepending "Re: " is an acceptable
> initialiation.
Yes. In fact it's the normal initialization.
> 4. Nothing else is an acceptable initialization.
Maybe. In conjunction with 2 it's okay.
> I have asked "who could live with my text"
Sorry, I must have missed this straw poll.
> contributed to this discussion
My last contribution was adding the example of a stripped...
Subject: new topic (was: old topic)
Subject: Re: new topic
...in 2002 (?). One attempt to post to the list in 2004 failed
- apparently you had some technical issues, and I was unsure
about my attempt to use GMANE (a news interface to your list,
see also <URL:news://news.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.usenet.format>).
> some people have reservations on the exact wording of that
> NOTE
Essentially I don't care as long as you get over this minor
point somehow without giving in to the "innovations" by John
and Bruce. Threads are often defined by "Re: same subject"
starting with either "same subject" or "same subject (was: x)",
e.g. Google's archive does this.
And References: headers may not survive all kinds of gateways
like news2mail or news2fido etc.
> that could change if others submit an opinion or clarify or
> change their present position.
See above. Trying to get rid of Re: is a bad idea and not
documenting common practice. And implementations using Aw: or
Sv: instead of Re: are harmful.
BTW, two minor points in my somehow lost message to the list:
At least one news server still honours Subject: cmsg cancel
in the old way, and with my ersatz-newsreader that's a feature
and no bug (netscape 3.x has no cancel).
Another server (Google) apparently expires Subject: cmsg cancel
immediately (i.e. you can't use it in normal articles).
Bye, Frank
-- 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