headers
Kai Henningsen | 1 Jun 1998 01:00
Picon

Re: Generic 3rd person pronoun

abraham <at> dina.kvl.dk (Per Abrahamsen)  wrote on 26.05.98 in <rjiumserv2.fsf <at> zuse.+dina.kvl.dk>:

[qpmpriv.xps]
> Henry Spencer <henry <at> spsystems.net> writes:
>
> > If our non-English/American/etc. colleagues have trouble following this
> > usage, we should consider changing it, no matter *how* technically (or
> > politically) correct it may be.
>
> I would find singular `they' very confusing.  But then again, at times
> I get confused by plural `you' as well.
>
> Would using `she' (incorrectly) as the gender neutral singular third
> person pronoun be an option?

I find those "trick" solutions much more confusing than "he" (which is  
directly analogue to what's correct in German) or "they" (which I read  
several times every day). I admit that "they" looked strange when I was  
younger, but then a lot of English did, and some still does.

MfG Kai
Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
John Moreno | 4 Jun 1998 07:18

Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

We haven't had much discussion or support for or against this, surely more of
you care one way or the other?

Current sentiments seem to be:

        MCT               Followup-CC-To        FollowUp-to: ngs, poster
        John Moreno       Claus André Färber    Simon Lyall
        Jonathan Grobe                          Greg Berigan
        Jonas Luster
        Per Abrahamsen

Greg is utterly opposed to MCT.

How do the rest of you feel?

The proposal below mainly just documents current practice (supported by
at /least/ 8 newsreaders -- dejanews reports more than 230,000 articles
with it).

***********************************************************************
Mail-Copies-To

    This header allows specifying a single e-mail address, or one of
    several keywords.  There are two alternate meanings for the
    keywords.  The keywords are not case sensitive.  This header only
    affects the initial, default settings of the message by the
    Followup/Reply Agent and the user MUST be able to change those
    settings.

    If the keywords "nobody" or "never" are specified, the agent MUST
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 23 comments |
headers
Evan Kirshenbaum | 4 Jun 1998 07:56
Picon

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

> We haven't had much discussion or support for or against this,
> surely more of you care one way or the other?

[snip]

> How do the rest of you feel?

I'll cast my vote for MCT.  It seems like a clean solution to the
problem (that some people like copies and some don't) and it is easy
to integrate with most existing agents because it is a fixed header.
I had some reservations about the earlier lack of specification of
default behavior, but I think the current SHOULD NOT is just right.

I'm a little leery about allowing from-content here.  While it is
arguably neater, it also seems ripe for abuse.  I don't recall the
reason that this was considered necessary.

As to the wording, it is unclear to me exactly what is meant by "MUST
provide a warning before allowing the user to change this" and "a
warning SHOULD be issued before allowing the user to change it".
Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I'm not sure what sort of warning
you have in mind.  On the other hand, I could see wording to the
effect that if an email copy is to be sent, this fact MUST be visible
to the user, and the user MUST be able to override.  (The last part is
there, but the first doesn't appear to be.)

Finally, while I understand that "never" and "always" are there for
compatibility purposes, they grate on me syntactically, and I'd
recommend that we at least say that a conforming agent SHOULD NOT
insert them.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 6 comments |
headers
Claus André Färber | 4 Jun 1998 12:48
Picon

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

John Moreno <phenix <at> interpath.com> schrieb:
> Rationale
>
> The reasons to allow a address is to allow the poster to specify a
> special address as a destination for copies of posted replies and to
> allow people posting using a invalid address to specify a valid address
> to which to send a Cc.  Only one address is allowed because of the
> potential for abuse.

And this, in my opinion is one of the drawbacks of Mail-Copies-To. I  
believe that the potential for legitimate use is much more important  
than that for abuse: It would allow users to participate in a discussion  
without having subscribed to the newsgroup (or mailing list). By having  
all addresses copied to the MCT header of a followup, the user could get  
copies of followups of followups. Preventing abuse could be done by the  
followup-preparing user agent by walking through the messages that  
appear in the References header and marking all addresses that do not  
appear in the From or Sender headers of any referenced articles or the  
MCT headers. Then the decision whether to send copies to these addresses  
is left to the user.

Abuse on the other hand is equally possible without allowing this: You  
could just put many addresses in the From header (which is allowed if  
Sender is present) and set MCT to "poster". Same with Reply-To.

--

-- 
Claus Andre Faerber <http://www.muc.de/~cfaerber/> Fax: +49_8061_3361
PGP: ID=1024/527CADCD FP=12 20 49 F3 E1 04 9E 9E  25 56 69 A5 C6 A0 C9 DC
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Greg Berigan | 4 Jun 1998 15:18
Favicon

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

usenet-format-list <at> faerber.muc.de (Claus André Färber) wrote:
>John Moreno <phenix <at> interpath.com> schrieb:

>> Rationale
>>
>> The reasons to allow a address is to allow the poster to specify a
>> special address as a destination for copies of posted replies and to
>> allow people posting using a invalid address to specify a valid address
>> to which to send a Cc.  Only one address is allowed because of the
>> potential for abuse.

People paranoid to use an invalid address don't put their valid address
anywhere.  Not in From, not in Reply-To, and not in the message body.
Mail-Copies-To exercises no magical powers.

> And this, in my opinion is one of the drawbacks of Mail-Copies-To. I
> believe that the potential for legitimate use is much more important
> than that for abuse:

And I disagree.  The potential of abuse of past headers (forging From and
setting Followup-To: poster, which requires extra steps and software
generally prevent(s|ed) the first) is no excuse for creating new headers
where abuse becomes easy.

	Mail-Copies-To: opt-in <at> cyberpromo.com

> It would allow users to participate in a discussion
> without having subscribed to the newsgroup (or mailing list). By having
> all addresses copied to the MCT header of a followup, the user could get
> copies of followups of followups.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
Greg Berigan | 5 Jun 1998 15:39
Favicon

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <Shmuel <at> ACM.Org> wrote:
>Greg Berigan <gberigan <at> cse.unl.edu> said:

>> People paranoid [enough] to use an invalid address don't put their valid
>> address anywhere.  Not in From, not in Reply-To, and not in the
>> message body.

> That's patently untrue. Perhaps they shouldn't put their addresses in
> the body, but many do.

Then why did so many people attack me for unmunging addresses in
attribution lines?  Sylvan Butler, one of the prime pushers for this new
header, even went to the lengths of putting my e-mail address in his
headers in order to increase the amount of spam I have to deal with.

I don't think you can argue that this header could be used as correction
for munging when one of the people behind it is a horrible munger
(nospam+_no_Zs__9805 <at> hpb13799.zboi.hpz.com (Sylvan Butler)) threatens
people with ISP action for daring to demunge.

No, my opposition to this header is separate from my problems with
Sylvan.  The best solution really is implementation of a method of
unambiguously identifying carbon copies so that mail readers can handle
them appropriately.

--

-- 
         ,=<#)-=#  <http://incolor.inetnebr.com/wotw/> (The War of the Worlds)
    ,_--//--_,
 _-~_-(####)-_~-_       If Microsoft is Coke... and Netscape is Pepsi...
(#>_--'~--~`--_<#)              Does that mean Opera is Jolt?
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Maurizio Codogno | 5 Jun 1998 16:08
Picon

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

In <1da2m03.bjumg533zpkyM <at> roxboro0-014.dyn.interpath.net>, John Moreno says:

% We haven't had much discussion or support for or against this, surely more of
% you care one way or the other?

% How do the rest of you feel?

I am in favour of Followup-To:, maybe adding "noposter"/"nottome" just
to give the original poster a way to say that she does not want a 
personal reply. 

I won't obiect too much to MCT, except that I don't understand why

%     The presence or absence of this header MUST NOT have any affect when
%     a reply is sent by e-mail instead of posted. 

ciao, .mau.
Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
Paul Overell | 5 Jun 1998 16:34

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

In article <199806051408.QAA04918 <at> beatles.cselt.it>, Maurizio Codogno
<mau <at> beatles.cselt.it> writes
>In <1da2m03.bjumg533zpkyM <at> roxboro0-014.dyn.interpath.net>, John Moreno says:
>
>% We haven't had much discussion or support for or against this, surely more of
>% you care one way or the other?
>
>% How do the rest of you feel?
>
>I am in favour of Followup-To:, maybe adding "noposter"/"nottome" just
>to give the original poster a way to say that she does not want a 
>personal reply. 
>

My objection to this is that it will break *existing* software, which
may try to post to newsgroups noposter or nottome.

--

-- 
Paul Overell                                        T U R N P I K E  Ltd
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
John Moreno | 5 Jun 1998 17:01

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

Greg Berigan <gberigan <at> cse.unl.edu> wrote:

> "Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <Shmuel <at> ACM.Org> wrote:
> >Greg Berigan <gberigan <at> cse.unl.edu> said:
> 
> >> People paranoid [enough] to use an invalid address don't put their valid
> >> address anywhere.  Not in From, not in Reply-To, and not in the
> >> message body.
> 
> > That's patently untrue. Perhaps they shouldn't put their addresses in
> > the body, but many do.
> 
> Then why did so many people attack me for unmunging addresses in
> attribution lines?  Sylvan Butler, one of the prime pushers for this new
> header, even went to the lengths of putting my e-mail address in his
> headers in order to increase the amount of spam I have to deal with.

Well, I thought that was silly myself, but it has nothing to do with the
fact that people DO put their real addresses in headers and/or the body
despite munging the From address.

> I don't think you can argue that this header could be used as correction
> for munging when one of the people behind it is a horrible munger
> (nospam+_no_Zs__9805 <at> hpb13799.zboi.hpz.com (Sylvan Butler)) threatens
> people with ISP action for daring to demunge.

The purpose of the header certainly isn't to correct munging, and in
these circumstances "invalid" doesn't have to mean "undeliverable" - say
I'm at your computer and posting using your account which means that the
From header will have your legitimate address in it, but I want to see
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
John Moreno | 5 Jun 1998 17:01

Re: Mail-Copies-To draft proposal #2

Maurizio Codogno <mau <at> beatles.cselt.it> wrote:

> John Moreno says:
> 
> % We haven't had much discussion or support for or against this, surely
> % more of you care one way or the other?
> 
> % How do the rest of you feel?
> 
> I am in favour of Followup-To:, maybe adding "noposter"/"nottome" just
> to give the original poster a way to say that she does not want a 
> personal reply. 

This will break existing software.

> I won't obiect too much to MCT, except that I don't understand why
> 
> %     The presence or absence of this header MUST NOT have any affect when
> %     a reply is sent by e-mail instead of posted. 

Because what it does is request a Cc of a usenet post - not a Cc of a
mail message.  If you wanted to get a Cc of the mail message the proper
way to do that would be to put the address(es) in Reply-To.

--

-- 
John Moreno
Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane