Re: [usefor] Changes to netnews header registrations

[Julien ÉLIE <[e-mail]>]

Hi Graham,

> TL;DR: I don't propose to recommend the additional changes you suggest
> as I'm not seeing that they really contribute to the purpose of the
> registry (cf. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3864#section-2.2.2).

OK, Content-* header fields used by netnews are not supposed to be 
registered.  Yet, is it the same for MIME-Version, that is not mentioned 
in neither Section 1 nor Section 2.2.2 of RFC3864?



> 2. With reference to the X-headers you mention, I see little point in
> adding new, non-standard headers to the registry simply to indicate they
> are now obsolete.  (There could be a case for doing this if they are in
> widespread use, but I think that should be a separate discussion, and a
> new RFC with its own IANA considerations section. I suspect it's not
> worth the effort!)

It depends on when we can say a header field is "wide-spread".
I've just had a look in two newsgroups:

* last 1043 messages (roughly October 2014-May 2016) in news.software.nntp:
391 (37%) contain X-Trace
216 (21%) contain X-Complaints-To

* last 1437 messages (roughly August 2014-May 2016) in soc.culture.french:
612 (43%) contain X-Trace
97 (7%) contain X-Complaints-To

Of course wider stats should be done because the generation of these 
headers depend on the news servers the users connect to.


X-Trace seems in wide-spread use, though.
I agree that writing a new RFC to just obsolete it is probably not worth 
the effort.  However, maybe X-Trace (and maybe other headers) could be 
added in IANA considerations section of an update of RFC 5536 if we ever 
move it to Draft Standard?

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« La différence entre un chanteur et une paire de chaussures est que
   le chanteur doit partir avant de lasser. La paire de chaussures, il
   vaut mieux les lacer avant de partir. » (Philippe Geluck)