Netnews Article Format
draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-12

[Ballot discuss]
First, the reference to draft-ietf-usefor-usepro needs to be
normative.  I don't think you can construct an article without
following advice related to path, injection-*, and control from that
document.  Parsing these fields without usepro is similarly difficult.


We received last call comments about the subsetting of RFC 2822
messages.  Very late, we realized that the real issue is not that
these requirements are difficult for new posting agents, but that they
are difficult when a email message is injected into usenet.  First, I
think more discussion of whether that is the right approach for
gateways is needed.  Second, regardless of what we say here, it will
be reasonably common for messages to be injected that do not meet
these requirements.  In the interests of interoperability we need to
discuss what problems can result and make recommendations for liberal
receivers that minimize interoperability problems.

[Ballot comment]
Section 3.2.8, paragraph 10:
>        posting-host = "posting@example.com:192.168.0.1"

Should use 192.0.2.0/24 - This block is assigned as "TEST-NET" for use in
documentation and example code.  It is often used in conjunction with
domain names example.com or example.net in vendor and protocol
documentation.  Addresses within this block should not appear on the
public Internet.

[Ballot discuss]
The Security Considerations say:
  >
  > Further security considerations are discussed in
  > [I-D.ietf-usefor-usepro].
  >
  There is some really good information in this document.  Can we make
  sure that it gets published?  I would like to see an RFC referenced,
  not an Internet-Draft, when this document becomes an RFC.

IANA Last Call Comments:

Upon approval of this document, the IANA will make the following assignments
in the "Permanent Header Messages" registry located at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/perm-headers.html

Value Protocol Status Reference
Also-Control netnews obsoleted [Son-of-1036](Section 6.15)
Approved netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.1)
Archive netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.2)
Article-Names netnews standard [Son-of-1036](Section 6.17)
Article-Updates netnews standard [Son-of-1036](Section 6.18)
Comments netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.6.5)
Control netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.3)
Date netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.1)
Date-Received netnews standard [RFC0850] (Section 2.2.4)
Distribution netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.4)
Expires netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.5)
Follow-up netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.6)
From netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.2)
Injection-Date netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.7)
Injection-Info netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.8)
Keywords netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2)
Lines netnews depricated [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.3.1)
Message-ID netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.3)
Newsgroups netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.4)
NNTP-Posting-Date netnews obsoleted NONE
NNTP-Posting-Host netnews obsoleted RFC2980 (Section 3.4.1)
Organization netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.9)
Path netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.5)
Posting-Version netnews obsoleted RFC0850 (Section 2.1.2)
References netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.10)
Relay-Version netnews obsoleted RFC0850 (Section 2.1.1)
Reply-To netnews obsoleted [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2)
See-Also netnews obsoleted [Son-of-1036](Section 6.16)
Sender netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section
3.2) [RFC2822] (Section 3.6.2)
Subject netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.1.6)
Summary netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.11)
Supersedes netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.12)
User-Agent netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section
3.2.13) [RFC2616] (Section 14.43)
Xref netnews standard [RFC-usefor] (Section 3.2.14)


[RFC-usefor] this document
[RFC0850]
[RFC2980]
[RFC2616]

[Son-of-1036] Spencer, H., "News Article Format and Transmission",
ftp://ftp.zoo.toronto.edu/pub/news.txt.Z, June 1994.

We understand the above to be the only IANA Actions for this document.

Write-up from Harald and Alexey

1). Have the chairs personally reviewed this version of the ID
and do they believe this ID is sufficiently baked to forward to the IESG for publication?

Yes and yes.

2). Has the document had adequate review from both key WG members and key non-WG members?

Yes and No. External review has not been solicited.

Do you have any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that have been performed?

No.

3). Do you have concerns that the document needs more review from a particular (broader) perspective (e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with AAA, etc.)?

No concerns. This is a rather isolated field.

4). Do you have any specific concerns/issues with this document that you believe the ADs and/or IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps you are uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or whether there really is a need for it, etc., but at the same time these issues have been discussed in the WG and the WG has indicated it wishes to advance the document anyway.

No concerns regarding the document, however IESG should be aware that the document doesn't just standardize existing Usenet article format, but also adds several new header fields. This issue was discussed in the WG and rough consensus was to add new features.

The group feels that it would be most appropriate to have this document approved by the IESG now, but that publication should be delayed until the companion document (USEPRO) comes out. This might take a while, given the slow progress the group has made so far. In the event of the group closing, the document can be published without USEPRO - there are no normative references.

5). How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with others being
silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and agree with it?

There is rough consensus among the 10 active participants to send the document to IESG.

Two WG participants have said that they think the WG should shut down and not send any document, citing the length of time it has taken to get here and concerns with the document quality.

6). Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
discontent? If so, please summarize what are they upset about.

Nobody has threated to appeal.

7). Have the chairs verified that the document adheres to _all_ of the
ID nits? (see http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html).

Yes (Note that the ID nits tool reports several Experimental warnings, but they all wrong)


8). Does the document a) split references into normative/informative,

Yes

and b) are there normative references to IDs, where the IDs are not also ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear state? (Note: the RFC editor will not publish an RFC with normative references to IDs, it will delay publication until all such IDs are also ready for publication as RFCs.)


This document doesn't have any normative reference to an ID.
There are three Informative references to IDs, two of them are working documents of the USEFOR WG
and another one (draft-ietf-nntpext-base) was approved for publication in June.

See above for discussion of the relation to draft-ietf-usefor-usepro.

9). For Standards Track and BCP documents, the IESG approval
announcement includes a writeup section with the following sections:

Summary

This document specifies the syntax of Netnews articles in the context of the "Internet Message Format" (RFC 2822) and "Multipurpose  Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)" (RFC 2045).  This document obsoletes
the mesasge format parts of RFC 1036, providing an updated specification to reflect current  practice and incorporating incremental changes specified in other documents. The document also adds several new header fields that replace various non-standard and non-interoperable header fields in use in Usenet today.

This is the first in a set of documents that obsolete RFC 1036. This
document focuses on the syntax and semantics of Netnews articles.

Another document describes protocol issues of Netnews articles
independent of transport protocols, e.g. control articles.

And yet another document describes policy related issues,
interoperability and usability related recommendations.

Process and goals history of this draft.

The USEFOR WG started its efforts to update RFC 1036 about 9 years ago. Several email related standards got published and updated in this timeframe.
Several WG chairs have changed since then, and many WG participants left or joined the WG (mostly left).

In May 2004, this document was a part of the 98-page draft-ietf-usefor-article-13.txt. Following the proposal of Pete Resnick, WG chair at the time, the document got split into 2 documents: draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-00.txt and draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-00.txt.

Following feedback from the WG members, Alexey Melnikov asked Ken Murchison to edit draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-xx.txt instead of  Charles Lindsey, taking a more concise draft (draft-kohn-news-article-03.txt) by Dan Kohn as the base.
Ken Murchison became the primary editor, while Charles Lindsey and Dan Kohn got
listed as co-editors of the draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-00.txt  document.

While the split and new primary editor helped to move things forward, this was not sufficient to get the document finished.

In April 2005, Harald Alvestand joined as co-chair of the WG. He introduced issue tracker to the WG,
which helped to prevent people from reraising old issues again and again. He also on one occasion suspended posting rights of one of the abusive WG members, which helped reduce the personal attacks in the group.

draft-ietf-usefor-usefor-10.txt is the result of a WG Last Call in April 2006 (which raised several issues, none of them requiring major changes) and a call for consensus on the resolution of Last Call comments in September 2006.

This draft is being submitted for Proposed Standard.

The USEFOR WG has reviewed the draft, last-call (and post last-call)
reviews included:
- Frank Ellermann
- Russ Allbery
- Richard Clayton
- Ralph Babel
- Forrest J. Cavalier III
- Seth Breidbart
- Dan Schlitt

Of the reviewers, two argued that the group should be disbanded and the draft ditched.