Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: sites changing a message id
Message-ID: <1991Jan12.234625.17232@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <CQP+%BA@b-tech.uucp>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 1991 23:46:25 GMT

In article <CQP+%BA@b-tech.uucp> zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) writes:
>Apparently various sites decided to change/add the message id on this
>article making it look like it had been posted many times.  Sounds
>like antisocial behavior on the part of some software somewhere.

Last time we ran into this, the diagnosis was messed-up headers in the
original (which can happen as a result of using an old version of C News
and posting an article whose early lines begin with white space, although
the odd format of the second Message-ID line argues weakly against this)
which caused B News not to see the Message-ID header... whereupon it adds
one with a message-ID of its own invention.  So the single messed-up
original is rebroadcasted, under a new message-ID, by every B News site 
it hits.  Ick.

I'm not sure this entirely accounts for this case, since the new ID looks
much more like a C News ID.  That's curious, because C News definitely does
*not* make up a message-ID to fill the gap.  Old C Newses just passed on
the article unmodified; new ones drop it on the floor.
-- 
If the Space Shuttle was the answer,   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
what was the question?                 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
