Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!ginosko!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Tired of bogus subject lines?
Message-ID: <2438@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 11 Sep 89 20:08:15 GMT
References: <7921@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1650@unocss.UUCP> <11509@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <6833@stiatl.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 68

>Actually, I'd like to see the RFC.  I suspect that it deals with what may be 
>in the header region, but not with the contents of the Subject: field.

Wrong.

>Would someone please post that RFC to this group, so that this may be
>judged fairly?  Then we'll decide what to do...

Well, here are the passages on "Subject:" and "References:":

2.1.4.  Subject

    The "Subject" line (formerly "Title") tells what the message is
    about.  It should be suggestive enough of the contents of the
    message to enable a reader to make a decision whether to read the
    message based on the subject alone.  If the message is submitted in
    response to another message (e.g., is a follow-up) the default
    subject should begin with the four characters "Re:", and the
    "References" line is required.  For follow-ups, the use of the
    "Summary" line is encouraged.

...

2.2.5.  References

    This field lists the Message-ID's of any messages prompting the
    submission of this message.  It is required for all follow-up
    messages, and forbidden when a new subject is raised.
    Implementations should provide a follow-up command, which allows a
    user to post a follow-up message.  This command should generate a
    "Subject" line which is the same as the original message, except
    that if the original subject does not begin with "Re:" or "re:", the
    four characters "Re:" are inserted before the subject.  If there is
    no "References" line on the original header, the "References" line
    should contain the Message-ID of the original message (including the
    angle brackets).  If the original message does have a "References"
    line, the follow-up message should have a "References" line
    containing the text of the original "References" line, a blank, and
    the Message-ID of the original message.

    The purpose of the "References" header is to allow messages to be
    grouped into conversations by the user interface program.  This
    allows conversations within a newsgroup to be kept together, and
    potentially users might shut off entire conversations without
    unsubscribing to a newsgroup.  User interfaces need not make use of
    this header, but all automatically generated follow-ups should
    generate the "References" line for the benefit of systems that do
    use it, and manually generated follow-ups (e.g., typed in well after
    the original message has been printed by the machine) should be
    encouraged to include them as well.

    It is permissible to not include the entire previous "References"
    line if it is too long.  An attempt should be made to include a
    reasonable number of backwards references.

It says "should" rather than "shall", but I couldn't find "shall" in the
document, so I don't know whether the use of "should" signifies that the
rules on "Subject:" lines are advisory or not.

Nevertheless, given that there do exist newsreaders that use "Subject:"
lines to construct threads - and that there is no hope that all postings
will have correct "Reference:" lines, absent changes to *mail* readers
on many systems (remember, some newsgroups are gatewayed to and from
Internet mailing lists) - it should be considered Bad Form for
newsreaders to put out subject lines with "improvements" like "Re^n:". 
(Whether messages containing such subject lines should be junked, fixed
in transit, or passed through, is an issue I have no desire to become
embroiled in....)