ISSUE: posting agents MAY add Injection-Date

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <87prmxrms3.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> 3.2.1.  Constructing the Path Header Field

>> We are now allowing (sometimes even requiring) posting agents to insert
>> an Injection Date.  Whereas clueful multiple injectors will probably do
>> this correctly, I am worried that incompetent MUA implementors (or which
>> there are many :-( ) will do it wrongly.
>>
>> On the other hand, now it seems to have been decided only to allow
>> injection agents to insert it in limited situations, it is desirable
>> that posting agents should be encouraged (somewhere between MAY and
>> SHOULD) to do it routinely (otherwise this new header will never catch
>> on). So I suggest:
>>    
>>    When the proto-article already contains both Message-ID and Date
>>    header fields, posting agents MAY, as part of the injection process
>>    (i.e. immediately before passing it to an injection agent), add an
>>    Injection-Date header field to that proto-article (a useful practice,
>>    since it provides diagnostic information and can imrove propagation).
>>    Moreover, they SHOULD do so if the Date header field (representing
>>    the composition time of the proto-article) is more than a day in the
>>    past at the time of injection. and they MUST do so if the
>>    proto-article is being submitted to more than one injecting agent;
>>    see Section 3.4.2.

>This is a protocol change, so I'd rather have you raise this one as a
>separate issue so that we can go through more process on addressing it.
>Personally, I'd prefer for most posting agents to not supply Message-ID,
>since the news server can generally do a better job, but I know that isn't
>always realistic.  Failing that, what you're saying does make sense to me.

OK, here it is, and I see that you partially agree.

My point is that many News User Agents do double duty as Email User
Agents. They routinely create Message-IDs for email messages, and hence
are likely to do the same for news articles. Granted they often do it
wrong (at one stage, my email was going out with Message-IDs based on
'localhost' :-( ), but that is the way it is, even if I might agree that
servers might indeed do the job better. So in that case, it is now likely
that the majority or articles will never receive an Injection-Date (which
is why I didn't like the IR formulation).

My proposal above is intended to mitigate this by encouraging ("MAY") user
agents to insert Injection-Date themselves if they are already doing
Message-ID.

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