Xref: utzoo news.admin:10335 news.software.b:5424 Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck From: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: new control messages Keywords: Was:Re: An apology for the invalid control messages. Message-ID: <38081@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 10 Aug 90 18:13:04 GMT References: <25157.26b95615@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <3295@stl.stc.co.uk> <38053@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9008100218.AA23766@mindcrf.mindcraft.com> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) Lines: 52 { I wrote } >The bug happened because the current software propogates bogus control >messages. If it threw them away instead with a message on stderr when >you tried to post one, the original sender would have gotten an error >message and no cruft would have been sent out to other systems. In article <9008100218.AA23766@mindcrf.mindcraft.com>, karish@mindcrf.UUCP writes: > And it would be practically impossible to add a new control message > to the currently-recognized set. It already is. Let's say you wanted to add a new control message called "link", to be used as follows: Control: link newsgroup This control message would install a cross-post "after the fact" so a previously posted article would appear in the new group. It could be used to create "best-of" groups, for example. You could do a group like comp.archives without reposting the articles (for this, you'd want "link" to have an alternate syntax that would allow a lot of message-ID's in the body). You could do summaries of other groups as well. The idea would be that people would keep the "summary" groups around longer; only the moderator of a "summary" group would post these control messages. People could set up "accolade" systems on their own if they wanted to. For example, suppose I decided I only wanted to see comp.arch articles that John Mashey thought were worthwhile. We'd give him a little tool to mark the good messages (possibly with an rn macro so he could hit one key to say a message was "worthy"). He'd send out these link messages to his fan list, and they could set up recnews to post link control messages with a local distribution. People like Geoff Goodfellow could use this to do their "in moderation news" stuff. The question of their right to do so would easily be solved -- just copyright your "link" control message (sorry, Patrick)! On the existing net, if you attempted to add this message, news admins from all systems that didn't have the new control message in their news would get lots of mail about it. With my change, the message would not propogate beyond a system that didn't have link installed. This isn't a disaster and makes it no more difficult to add new control messages; it does mean that you don't get control messages that your upstream sites don't recognize. So adding new control messages is orthogonal to the issue of whether you propogate control messages you don't recognize. -- Joe Buck jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck