From: Thomas Fini Hansen <beast@...>
Date: 2004-06-10T04:20:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Reply wasn't posted; will test new post

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 03:53:44AM +0900, daz wrote:
> What protection is it trying to offer and to whom?
> It can't be for security because day after day it's allowing the g/w
> to "spoof with implicit permission" NG posts made up from ML members
> emails.  But if you try posting a reply without a References: header
> .... oh, no, sorry, we can't allow that, it might upset someone's
> newsreader threading or something... and returns an NNTP error as if
> it were an NNTP violation (which it isn't).

Doesn't seem much different than a SMTP server returning an SMTP error
when SpamAssassin fires off.

Indeed it's not stricktly a NNTP error, but they're rejecting posts
that violate the USENET RFC, so why doen't we just make the messages
meet the RFC?
 
> Could it have a bug which the authors might be grateful to know about?

Perhaps it's a feature? 

And from your other mail:

> My observation is that "news.zrz" also has an opinion on which
> combinations of outbound headers are "correct" and that the
> criteria for "correctness" are stricter than RFC850 for Usenet.

No matter how many times I read RFC 850 section 2.1.6 (or RFC 1036 for
that matter), I cannot see how this should be 'stricter' in any
way. On the contrary, it's criteria seems to be compliance.

> My news host, for example, will accept the exact same
> message that "news.zrz" rejects.  It appears on Usenet.

That just proves that your news host has more lax requirements, not
that the article is in fact valid. To pull the SMTP comparison again,
our mailserver routinely reject mails that violate the specs, yet
another mailserver didn't reject them. 

Frankly, I can't see what the big fuzz is about, inject the damn
References header, it's the right thing to do, whether one considers
it 'klunky' or not.

-- 
Thomas
beast@system-tnt.dk