Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!oliveb!olivey!jerry
From: jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: article expiration
Summary: expire needs a limit on "Expires" header
Message-ID: <43009@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: 14 Jun 89 18:55:29 GMT
References: <3877@utastro.UUCP> <431fc60f.15831@gtephx.UUCP> <3897@utastro.UUCP> <6742@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <3195@epimass.EPI.COM> <305@celit.UUCP>
Sender: news@oliveb.olivetti.com
Reply-To: jerry@olivey.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 25

In article <305@celit.UUCP> news@celerity (NetNews Administrator) writes:
>In article <3195@epimass.EPI.COM> jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes:
>>Unfortunately, many news admins do this, mainly because of "Expires": abuse.
>>Every once in a while, someone complains in the news.* groups about people
>>who think their articles should be retained until the 21st century, and
>>a chorus of answers come in, talking about expire -I, which, of course,
>>throws out the news.announce.users babies with the talk.bizarre bathwater.
>>Of course, you can do multiple expire runs...

The news software already has configurable limits so that incomming
articles greater than a certain age will get rejected.  I suggest that
it should also have a configurable limit on the maximimum time allowed
in an "Expires" line.

Many postings make good use of the "Expires" line but they seem to limit
themselves to a month or perhaps 6 weeks.  The problem is the jokers
that specify 31 Dec 1999.  Assuming we can agree on a reasonable limit
I propose that the expire software be modified to enforce that limit by
allowing a maximum of N days between posting and expiration.  I propose
a default limit of 90 days.  Of course each site could taylor that based
on its needs.

I do not suggest rejecting postings with long expires or changing the
"Expires" line in the article.  Each site should have the option of how
much to trust the "Expires" lines.