Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews - what is going on here?
Message-ID: <1991Apr14.001938.28762@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1991 00:19:38 GMT
References: <1991Apr13.134056.30936@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Apr13.134056.30936@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>leading five sites sending news with bad headers:
>   2 mp.cs.niu.edu
>
> The funny thing is that the site listed is my own.  What exactly is
>happening here?

The problem -- which I've already noticed, and complained to Geoff
about :-) -- is that when relaynews can't figure out where the article
came from, it attributes it to your own machine.  This mostly happens
because the Path header doesn't exist or doesn't contain something that
looks like a path (i.e. no '!').

There is no good fix for the problem if some site hands you articles
that have, say, just a name in the Path header.  Relaynews simply has
no way to tell that those aren't local postings.  For the other cases,
it really ought to be saying "???" instead of giving your own site name.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry