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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Articles rejected by C news at ukma
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.230017.21259@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1991 23:00:17 GMT
References: <1991Jun25.172300.24154@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Jun26.024210.9578@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1991Jun26.155257.5692@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Jun26.220203.17522@uunet.uu.net>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Jun26.220203.17522@uunet.uu.net> kyle@uunet.uu.net (Kyle Jones) writes:
>henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> > To properly implement the robustness principle, when you relay
> > traffic you *must* make sure it meets the specs, either by
> > repairing deviations or by rejecting nonconforming articles.
> > We chose rejection ...
>
>The flaw in this logic is that you are discarding data that you
>cannot reproduce.  This is not robustness.  Robustness is coping
>intelligently with bad input, not discarding it...

This is a curious definition of robustness, and one that is not supported
by existing practice.  If you read RFC1122, for example, you will find a
number of cases where it is not merely permitted but *demanded* that you
silently discard bad input, because experience has shown that any attempt
to deal intelligently with those cases can easily make things much worse.
That is precisely the problem here.  There are things that are worse than
lost articles, and while it may be desirable to improve the situation,
it is *imperative* not to worsen it.

>If relaynews can't figure out how to repair an article, then the
>very _least_ it should do is put the article into a place where a
>smarter program (or a human) can have a crack at it.

We decided long ago that relaynews will not attempt to repair articles.
Nothing in this dreary and repetitive debate has changed our minds on
that.  We do, however, plan to do something about preserving the evidence
for human investigation.

>There's already a newsgroup for wayward articles: "junk"...

Not quite right, unfortunately, since articles in "junk" still get sent
on to other sites.  (There are good reasons for this, by the way; the
junk-handling policy took *A LOT* of thought and experimenting to get
right.)  Having another pseudogroup for discarded articles is an obvious
possibility, although something has to be done to bound its size and be
selective about what gets included.
-- 
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry