Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!utastro!werner From: werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Tired of bogus subject lines? Summary: what is wrong with automating complaints to sites who do not conform with RFC-standards, preventing news-software features to function properly? Message-ID: <4347@utastro.UUCP> Date: 12 Sep 89 00:55:47 GMT References: <7921@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1650@unocss.UUCP> Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX Lines: 44 aside from the question if Gene posted the original article (he is in Europe at the moment and will not be back and able to comment on the matter until the second week of October, probably)... ...I fail to see what is wrong with someone sending notes to sites and authors who fail to conform with RFC-standards for message-headers! ...and I fail to see what is wrong with using the computer to automate and support this venture! ...and I fail to see what is wrong in sharing the script or program with other people! quite honestly, I imagine that someone thought the Re^2: a cute header and started using it without being aware of the consequence and others started copying it (I admit that it is possible that I have done so) - so we have a problem at hand, in that the software with smarts to follow discussion threads cannot work anymore, right? so how to deal with that? post an article to news.*? won't work, it is not likely that many of the authors of the offending articles read it. send a polite email message to the authors of offending articles pointing out the problem they are causing others is the only available path. doing this manually is adding injury to insult. responding only to the ones one personally reads is not going to quell this "cutsy habit" as fast as it is likely to spread. automating a response to all offending news-articles is the only way to go. Quite honestly, I found some of the follow-ups to the original article quite offensive; rather than sending a polite questioning query to the author of the message that causes you grief, some people have a habit of "shooting first and asking later". It is truely depressing, especially when it happens to people with an established track-record of years of "public service" to the net, as is the case here. -- -----------> PREFERED RETURN-ADDRESS FOLLOWS <-------------- (ARPA) werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1) (UUCP) ..!utastro!werner or ..!uunet!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner