🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <812639981snz@microvst.demon.co.uk>
           tgold@microvst.demon.co.uk "Anthony R. Gold" writes:

> Next, please read what I wrote and not what you choose to distort out of 
> it. I did not suggest that I would use an invalid address in Usenet. I can 
> assure you that RFC1036 does not require that I even read let alone 
> respond to mail sent to the address in a poster's address line. My 
> suggestion was no more that that I totally ignore and bounce to a bit 
> bucket anything that arrives.

I'm afraid you are wrong.  When Compuserve first implemented Usenet access,
and at the time required a flag to be set to permit incoming Internet mail,
there were *many* very annoyed complaints in alt.online-service.compuserve
from people who had seen a query, spent some time researching and replying,
only to have the reply bounce.  So much so that Compuserve changed the
rules and prevented anyone posting to a newsgroup unless the flag was set
to permit reply mail.  Your suggestion that replies should be dropped is
even worse.  It is standard netiquette that replies of general interest
should be posted to the newsgroup, but that specialist replies only of
interest to one person should be mailed.  The balance between the two
perhaps varies according to the newsgroup, but there are high volume
technical groups where posting a private reply publicly would not be
appreciated.

> In my view, the only requirement of the 
> valid sender's address is to receive possible bounces and to identify the 
> party responsible so that they may be held accountable.

That may be *one* reason, but not the only one, and in the view of many not
the most important reason.

-- 
John F Hall     jfhall@avondale.demon.co.uk    CompuServe: 100016,1210