Xref: utzoo news.admin:15480 news.software.b:8407 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!ucsd!hub.ucsb.edu!appmag!curly.appmag.com!verano!pa From: pa@verano.UUCP (Pierre Asselin) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Summary: Maybe it can work. Change floated. Message-ID: <719@verano.UUCP> Date: 24 Jun 91 05:39:06 GMT References: <285E73EC.3723@tct.com> <1991Jun21.152743.22927@sceard.Sceard.COM> Reply-To: pa@appmag.com Followup-To: news.admin Organization: None. Santa Barbara, CA Lines: 89 (Why am I jumping into this?) In article <1991Jun21.152743.22927@sceard.Sceard.COM> mrm@Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy) writes: >In article > mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) writes: >[...] >> >>The worst possible case is that we get one short error report for each bad >>article. > >Your "we" is a bit centric, isn't it? The worst case is that every site that >gets the error reporting newsgroup gets the report. If the error is reported >through the generation of a new message, then perhaps even more sites get the >report. It is a waste of a global resource to solve a local problem. Your >solution is inefficient and not well thought. Mathew's proposal isn't that bad. I can think of horror scenarios that cause local problems temporarily, but nothing that would clog the net globally. Mike may have something, though. Let's see... 1) A site posts an ill-headed message to an obscure but world-wide newsgroup. Instead, an error report goes out to news.errors; many more sites receive it than would have seen the original. 2) A site can reach the net at large through Cnews sites, but also through a Bnews-only path. If a message has non-compliant headers, Bnews sites worldwide see both the original and the error report. Potential increase of 100% in articles from that site, probably much less in bytes. Number (1) could be a problem for me. I get a limited feed. I can't pay for error stubs originating in alt.everything. Frankly, I don't know if it'll be a problem. I don't know how much traffic news.errors would carry. If the traffic is light, there is no problem. If the traffic is heavy, news.errors becomes ineffective and you might as well tell your feed(s) not to forward it to you. Of course, All the code writing, testing, patching and voting will have been in vain. I too would like to see some sort of error reporting mechan- ism. I expect it to be incomplete, unreliable and slow. General guidelines: - The pain should go where the problems are, because that's the only way they'll get fixed. If Mathew's messages are getting dropped, he and no one else should take care of it --but he has to know. - Any feature is a bug if you can't turn it off. The error-reporting mechanism had better be damned easy to switch off on the fly if anything goes wrong. - It has to be through the news. I don't see how mail- based notification has a prayer. A recent post to ca.test showed me that =my= mail feed is f*** up, possi- bly out of my control. I run B-news, so I'm a potential problem site. I don't want error notices bouncing between mailer daemons trying to reach me. The pain should go to me, not to a postmaster at a random site. Okay. Possible fix to potential problem (1). Someone tell me if this'll work. Modify Mathew's algorithm as follows: 5.5 Take the Message-ID of the bad article and replace the opening "<" with "