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.
Protocol Quality
Lisa Dusseault reviewed this document for the IESG.