Re: ietf-nntp BCP for RFC977 server/RFC1036 interaction

[Rich Salz <[e-mail]>]

What's the difference betwen IHAVE and POST?  On POST the server will
add "missing" headers and do some other special work -- mailing to
moderators, e.g.  Can you define any other difference?

>I do not see any reason for standard readers to need to specify a Path. 

Fine.  I do.

>If there are "hostile" hosts out there, then we should be spending the
>effort to get them shut down rather than "breaking the rules" in order to 
>let people get around these sites.

Really?  Please tell me how you would handle Brad not wanting to send "bad"
jokes to UWaterloo.  Please promise me that something like this will never
happen again.  Please tell me why I, as a user, can't put "!synapse" so
that you never see my postings.

>Gateways are somewhat trickier, in that I assume the case you mean is for
>news-to-mail-to-news gatewaying, where you'd want to restore the path.  
>What about posting it via ihave?  That would at least require the posting 
>agent to have server access to the machine, something one could 
>reasonably expect from a gateway.

It would also require the gateway to know, e.g., about the moderated
status of anything it gateways.

>In my mind, the path is supposed to represent the news servers a message 
>has passed through, and if you're not an news server you shouldn't be 
>playing with it.

Path says where the article has been, to avoid retransmission.  Anything
else is additional semantics not in the spec.

>If it is really an issue, I'd be happy with the following wording:
>"Servers MUST by default remove Path headers on post, however they MAY
>have a configurable option to disable this behaviour." 

If I bang-on the IP address of the client then this is not necessary,
in fact it is unduly restrictive.
	/r$