Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bridge2!mdb From: mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Tired of bogus subject lines? Message-ID: Date: 12 Sep 89 06:13:43 GMT References: <7921@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1650@unocss.UUCP> <11527@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <6121@ficc.uu.net> Sender: news@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM Organization: 3Com Corp., Mountain View, CA. Lines: 49 In-reply-to: peter@ficc.uu.net's message of 11 Sep 89 12:30:33 GMT In article <6121@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: peter> In article <11527@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, rsk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rich Kulawiec) writes: rsk> Well, until someone writes another RFC to replace the existing rsk> one, it's all we've got, flaws or not -- and silently tossing an rsk> article into "junk" because of a noncompliant "Subject" line rsk> doesn't seem inherently different to me than junking it because rsk> it has no "From" line, a badly formatted "Date", or any other rsk> problem. peter> But the From and Date lines are computer generated. peter> Let's consider a potential case. Suppose I'm reading peter> rec.arts.sf-lovers, and I am getting tired of the Annual peter> Heinlein Flame Fest. I post an article with the subject: peter> Re^32767: Flaming Heinlein. peter> It's not a reply, it doesn't violate the RFC. It *looks* to a peter> human like it's in violation, but the RFC doesn't mention peter> subject lines beginning with "Re^" at all, so it's OK. peter> A few (very few) remaining NN sites might still be doing this peter> automatically, but the problem is going away without your peter> terrorist tactics. Yes, that's broken... as it would be if it peter> just copied the subject line without putting any "Re" at all. peter> Should you junk any articles with a references line and no Re: peter> in the subject line? Feh. If I were going to junk articles (which I do not advocate), those are exactly the articles which I would agree 'could' be junked. (Those articles which have a References: line, but do NOT have a Subject: starting with the four characters "Re: ".) The posting software should not allow an article to be posted which voilates the 'standard'. Someone trying to post a 'new' article with a References: line should have the newsposting software complain. If you wanted to use the Re^n: then you would have to modify the Subject: to have "Re: Re^n: " as the prefix. (As has been said, modification of the Subject string is allowed so putting in the extra Re^n would be 'legal'). However, I doubt that 'Re: Re^n: ' prefixes would find much favor. :-) -- Mark D. Baushke Internet: mdb@ESD.3Com.COM UUCP: {3comvax,auspex,sun}!bridge2!mdb