Xref: utzoo news.admin:3996 news.software.b:1749
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!lsuc!sickkids!mark
From: mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Who is munging article headers (Berkeley, I suspect), and WHY?
Message-ID: <115@sickkids.UUCP>
Date: 15 Nov 88 13:38:25 GMT
Reply-To: mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt)
Distribution: na
Organization: Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
Lines: 64

This morning, I was surprised to see an article, which I posted last
Friday (and read), mysteriously reappear.  Odd, I thought.  Even if it
had found its way back here, the netnoise software should have tossed
it in the dustbin, since it's already in the history file, right?

Then I had a look at the header.  Lookie here:

   Message-ID: <112@sickkids.UUCP>
   ---
   Message-ID: <8811140701.AA07480@jade.berkeley.edu>

Who, and by what authority, is trashing my Message-ID, and replacing it
with one of their own?  Oh, yeah, they changed my Organization, too:

   Organization: Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
   ---
   Organization: The Internet

Gee, I didn't know I'd changed employers.  They made a few other changes,
as well.  For example, someone decided that the message shouldn't have
gone to both the newsgroups I posted the article to, so they chose the
one they considered appropriate:

   Newsgroups: comp.protocols.ibm,comp.protocols.misc
   ---
   Newsgroups: comp.protocols.ibm

They also totally removed the Distribution line that was there when the
article left here:

   Distribution: na

I'll have to go look in the netnoise source code to see what default
gets used if no Distribution is specified, but I have this fear that
my message has now (inappropriately) gone on a world tour.

Here's the Path line, folded for easier readability:

   Path: sickkids!lsuc!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!
           ucbvax!sickkids.UUCP!mark

The article left here (sickkids) via lsuc, thence (I presume) attcan.
From there, who knows?  Note that Berekeley has removed all the sites
between us (sickkids.UUCP) and them (ucbvax), so it's impossible to
tell what path it actually took to get there.  My original intent was
to include the Path line in hopes that it might help someone track down
the problem, in case Berkeley might have put some of the rubbish there
because they got handed a copy of the article with missing or invalid
header lines.  But since Berkeley seems to have decided to delete all
that possibly-useful information (I mean, what the heck is the damned
Path line *for*, if not to tell what path a message traveled to get
from point A to point B?), I guess it's all rather pointless.

Anyway, am I being reasonable in considering all the above examples of
header munging to be wrong, *wrong*, WRONG?  If so, would it be asking
too much to suggest that the people responsible for this spend some time
to fix it?

Or, if I *am* being unreasonable in my grousing, could someone please
provide a justification for all this header-rewriting?  Thanks.

Mark Bartelt                          UUCP: {utzoo,decvax}!sickkids!mark
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto   BITNET: mark@sickkids.utoronto
416/598-6442                          INTERNET: mark@sickkids.toronto.edu