ISSUE: Moderators SHOULD retain existing message-id

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Issue # requested.

We discussed this earlier, and I had assumed Frank was going to raise it
(maybe he assumes I was). It still needs resolving.

The issue is whether this needs normative wording, or whether it is merely
a USEAGE matter.

The argument for normative wording is that in various situations confusion
can be caused if the Message-ID in the published article is not that
chosen by the poster. Various such situations have been mentioned, but
here are the two main examples:

1. The same message might be both posted and mailed (maybe to some mailing
list). If it is essentially the same messqage in either medium, then it
ought to have the same Message-ID [1].

2. Some posters keep a record of the Message-IDs of the articles they
post, so that their User Agents can flag any replies to them.

There are doubltess other weird and unpredictable circumstances which
could casue similar problems. OTOH, situations where it is _necessary_ for
the moderator to change a Message-ID are much fewer (e.g. he has
substantially altered the article before posting it, or he is aware it has
already been multi-posted to other non-moderated groups). A "SHOULD" still
gives him leeway to change it in such cases.

[1] This is separate from the related issue where that mailing list is
itself gated into Usenet; this situation is already well covered in our
Gayewaying section.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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