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From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Responsibility for non-RFC articles
Message-ID: <ku2B432w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 10 Jun 91 15:50:19 GMT
References: <284FDD50.1722@tct.com>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 24

chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>    A user who chooses his news software poorly
>        will get burned, no matter what.

Now that is an argument I can sympathize with.

Unfortunately, those of us who don't happen to run UNIX tend not to have much
choice about the news software we run.

> 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.

No. Each system administrator chooses the system and software. The user may
have had nothing whatsoever to do with that (possibly bad) choice, and may be
powerless to change it. So if you punish users, you will still end up
punishing the innocent.


mathew