Xref: utzoo news.admin:15043 news.software.b:8178 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!pdn!tscs!tct!chip From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Responsibility for non-RFC articles Message-ID: <284FDD50.1722@tct.com> Date: 7 Jun 91 19:24:00 GMT References: <1991Jun05.051219.27329@looking.on.ca> Followup-To: news.admin Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL Lines: 27 According to mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*): >How many people would take the time to sit and correct mistakes, >to research sources, to carefully edit considered responses, if >all that work could end up being thrown away through no fault of >the user, and without the user being told? Although I agree that failure notices are desirable, I must point out a vital fact that Mathew seems to be ignoring: A user who chooses his news software poorly will get burned, no matter what. It can be (and has been) argued that the loss of an article that is not RFC-compliant is "no fault of the user." I disagree. Each user chooses which system and what software to use for posting to Usenet. If a user chooses a system with news software (rn and B News, for example) with which it is possible for invalid articles to escape to neighbor systems, then that user has made a poor choice of service provider. If that poor choice results in lost articles, the user who made that choice has no one to blame but himself. In other words: The author of a bad article may not realize that he is to blame for that article's loss; but he is, anyway. Caveat postor. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , perl -e 'sub do { print "extinct!\n"; } do do()'