Xref: utzoo news.admin:14505 news.software.b:7824 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!celit!billd From: billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <17882@celit.fps.com> Date: 20 May 91 18:47:21 GMT References: <1991May18.211109.20401@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991May20.093018@mccall.com> Followup-To: news.admin Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA Lines: 65 In article <1991May20.093018@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes: >C news is now dropping my articles on the floor. I don't keep track of >C news, I was unaware that there was a problem with the newsreader I use, That's your problem. It was announced in advance. (The plans have been on display at the local planning office at Alpha Centauri for ... ;-). Henry and Geoff have been threatening for a long time and they finally made good on their threats. When the patches were put out, Henry posted a big warning message that things were different now. >C news reporting of the problem appears to be obscure enough that only 2 >sysadmins on the entire net were willing to put forth the effort to >determine where the messages came from, and who sent them. What makes you think your articles even got to very many admins? It's very possible that you don't have a non-Cnews path to the entire net. At some point there may have been only to places for your article to continue and both were Cnews sites. I'ts very posssible and even probably though I don't know much about your section of th net. Your path to me indicates a couple of KSU sites. Are they running Cnews? >This could have been done with prior announcement, It was. >an attempt to find >non-conforming news software and notify users and authors of the impending >change, How do you propose to do that? Do you have even the faintest clue as to how many systems are on the net or how many different types and versions of software generate or pass news articles? Don't think about it. It will make your brain hurt. >and some mechanism to ease the transition (like generating a >specific report that would list for each article specifically affected by >the change, the From: line, Message-Id:, and what was wrong with the >article. Sysadmins that care could then do something about it. >You could have even done something reasonable, like in this version bitching >about the formatting problem, but accepting it, and in the NEXT version, >rejecting it. That would have given the rest of the net some chance fix our >software BEFORE you started throwing away articles. People have been bitching about bad news software for years. Even Bnews bitches in the log file about bad headers. I suspect Cnews did too, even when it didn't drop articles. A lot of people don't fix their software until forced to. There are people out there running Bnews 2.9. There may even be older versions out there but that was the first version that respsonded to the version control message. >Obviously, Henry Spencer is under no obligation to do anything at all in >particular with software he writes, so don't even start that flame war. He >doesn't have to even know standards exist. However, please don't try to >construe this action as being in the public good. It wasn't. It could have >been, if transition had been considered. It was for the public good. News software that generates bad headers needs to be fixed or replaced. People have been begging for it. News software bitches about the lack of it. Henry warned everybody about it. I'm glad that I get less bad header messages in my log file and I don't care that I miss a few articles from sites that have bad news posting software. In fact I'm glad. USENET addiction wastes too much of my time anyway (I know, that's MY problem ;-). --Bill Davidson