ietf-nntp <0> and message IDs

[Matthias Andree]

"Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>    moderation process). In particular, if the article contained a header
>    with name "Message-ID", the client SHOULD ensure that the contents of
>    this header are identical when resending it and the server SHOULD
>    ensure that the re-sent article is recognised as a duplicate and not
>    assigned a different message-id to the original.
>
> which I think reflects the actual situation more closely.

This is prone to duplicates. Netscape Communicator 4.7X/4.8X goof this
up, and may return a bogus "error" condition to the user who then
resends until success -- and the newsgroup ends up with half a dozen
posts sent within seconds. Sure, it's an implementation defect in
Communicator and a violation of a SHOULD; is there any reason not to
make this a MUST? I. e. why not write "the client MUST ensure that the
contents of this header are identical when resending it and the server
MUST". The latter "MUST" is moot, because a tight interpretation then
might give rise to (implementation-wise) hashing the article body and
figuring the article is a dupe even when the Message-ID is different --
although that would be desirable, it's a lot of effort.

-- 
Matthias Andree