Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: warning to all sinners in regard to current C News patches
Message-ID: <1991Mar30.224201.20534@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1991 22:42:01 GMT
References: <1991Mar24.035259.20738@zoo.toronto.edu> <RD.91Mar29140206@pixie.aii.com>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <RD.91Mar29140206@pixie.aii.com> rd@pixie.aii.com (Bob Thrush) writes:
>... It would be more
>desirable for this version to just alert the local system administrator
>about the problems rather than rejecting as well.  A future version
>could provide the current tighter behavior after the offenders have had
>a chance to mend their ways.

There were various possibilities for how to go about this, but it always
seemed to boil down to the hard, cold fact that people seldom fix their
news software until they are forced to.  Alerts just don't help much.

>  The author of the rejected article is probably unaware that a problem
>exists.  Rejecting the article won't make him/her any more aware unless
>they happen to be posting on a newly upgraded C news machine.

An unfortunate problem.  Our feeling, though, is that the problem is
usually not with the article's author, but with the gatewaying software
the article is passing through, or the posting software being used.
It's really hard to come up with a way to get a complaint to the right
place.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
