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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: cleaning up the net -- software sol
Message-ID: <2485@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 01:50:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2485
Posted: Wed Jul 24 01:50:10 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 22:02:34 EDT
References: <2982@nsc.UUCP> <1300009@ccvaxa>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 48

> In response to isis!burt, who asked about modifying news to take advantage
> of References: lines so people wouldn't feel inclined to include half the
> previous posting, I will once again leap onto my 'notes' soapbox.
> 
> The University of Illinois' notesfile software (see your 4.2BSD user-
> contributed software tape or write to ihnp4!uiucdcs!essick) presents related
> notes (articles) together. If you're reading a note and want to refer to a
> previous note from the same discussion, a backspace or two will take you to
> it (or a couple more keystrokes if it's been a long discussion). If the
> string of notes gets broken (by people using post instead of followup?) you
> can also locate notes in the notesfile (newsgroup) by searching for a
> specific author or a specific string in the title (Subject: line).

However, if your site gets a note *without* the note that started the
discussion off, some versions of "notes" proceed to do something that not
only screws the site running "notes" but everybody who has to read that
site's followups...

It decides that Something Evil Happened and that the note that arrived is a
(drumroll please...) - Orphaned Response.  The "Re: <original subject>"
header gets lost somehow, along with the <original subject>.  All responses
from the notes site then propagate into the outside world bearing the
Subject: line "Re: Orphaned Response".  The only information conveyed by
this title is that 1) a "notes" site got into the act somewhere and 2) that
site didn't get the "base note" of the discussion before it got a later note.

I believe there is a later version of "notes" that actually handles Orphaned
Responses in a sane fashion.  I believe it also supports B news format for
article exchange with non-"notes" systems, rather than A news format, so you
don't lose information like "References:".  (I don't know what "notes" does
with "References:" lines, though - it'd be nice if it realized that the
article should be in the same discussion as the first, if not all, the
referenced articles.  It'd be nicer if it saved the individual subject lines
for all those articles, since you *can* have more than one "Subject:" in a
discussion when using B news...)

In short, be nice to your USENET neighbors - *DON'T* run "notes" if you
intend to talk with non-"notes" sites, unless you *KNOW* that the version of
"notes" you're going to run can handle Orphaned Responses.  (Oh yes, and
when you *do* set up "notes", *please* make sure your articles don't leave
home with a "Path" line like

	Path: ...!uiucdcs!uicsl!seefromline

That "Path:" is often the only mail path available, and unless "seefromline"
is your account on the machine in question, it doesn't do anybody much good.)

	Guy Harris