🚀 go-pugleaf

   From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
   Date: 17 Jul 89 19:12:36 GMT

   Did anyone think that people typed those 20-hop paths by hand?  Especially
   people who don't know what they are doing?  Replies to news articles
   and subsequent replies to those messages are almost certainly the source
   of everything the rabid rerouters complain about.
   So, why not fix it in the news software by making hosts that are capable
   of re-routing rewrite the Path: line so that mail following the Path:
   will be "dynamically" re-routed?  That way the dumber downstream sites
   don't need to change anything (any they probably won't anyway).

Because one of the purposes of the Path: header in news (in my opinion,
the PRIMARY purpose) is to track the places where that article has
already gone, and not send it on further.  Your suggestion would have
news travelling in loops, further overloading high-bandwidth sites.

Using the Path: header as a mail reply path is, at best, unreliable, and
at worst (think of moderated newsgroups, or newsgroups that are
gatewayed to and from mailing lists) completely wrong.


				 AMBAR
ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu		   {mit-eddie,uunet}!bloom-beacon!ambar