Subject: [NNTP] Wording for the "x" status in RFC 6048

From: Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:44:20 +0100

Following a discussion with Alfred Hönes, who reported:

> The only place where I got stuck in RFC 6048 was in Section 3.1,
> in the 6th paragraph on page 17.  The RFC says:
> 
> |  A newsgroup with status "x" is a newsgroup with status "n", except
> |  that articles from peers are not accepted.  [...]
> 
> Given the definition from RFC 3977 that you quote slightly above,
> at the bottom of page 16,
> 
>     "n"  Posting is not permitted.
> 
> the "except that" does not make sense to me.
> 
> (In contrast, where the 7th paragraph says ...
> 
> |  A newsgroup with status "j" is a newsgroup with status "y", except
> |  that (1) local postings are not accepted, (2) articles received from
>     a peer that are crossposted to one or more valid groups are filed
>     only into those valid groups, and (3) articles received from a peer
>     that are not crossposted to any valid groups are not filed into any
>     newsgroup, but are still propagated to other peers, if appropriate.
> 
> ... "except that" makes perfect sense.)
> 
> Reading the subsequent explanations and examples, I conclude that
> the RFC 3977 status field values only affect local posting and
> are transparent to forwarding behavior.
> 
> Therefore, it would IMO have been less surprising/confusing if the
> 6th paragraph would have said:
>                                                                vvvvvvvvv
> |  A newsgroup with status "x" is a newsgroup with status "n", for which
> |  articles from peers also are not accepted.  [...]
>   ^                   ^^^^^^
> 
> Is that correct?
> Would it make sense to post that adjustment as an Errata Note?

What annoys me most here is that RFC 3977 is not clear enough
when it describes status field values.
"Posting" means "Injection" (USEPRO [RFC 5537] terminology).
We have in RFC 3977:

3.4.1.  Reading and Transit Servers

   NNTP is traditionally used in two different ways.  The first use is
   "reading", where the client fetches articles from a large store
   maintained by the server for immediate or later presentation to a
   user and sends articles created by that user back to the server (an
   action called "posting") to be stored and distributed to other stores
   and users.  The second use is for the bulk transfer of articles from
   one store to another.  Since the hosts making this transfer tend to
   be peers in a network that transmit articles among one another, and
   not end-user systems, this process is called "peering" or "transit".
   (Even so, one host is still the client and the other is the server).

So basically, "Posting is not permitted." means that injection is not
permitted while relaying is.
That's why I wrote "except that articles from peers are not accepted"
because "x" means that relaying is not allowed in a newsgroup whose
status is "x".

I also explicitly mentioned it before in RFC 6048, in the introduction,
Section 1:

   The ACTIVE variant was formalized in [RFC3977], but the meanings of
   only three status field values in LIST ACTIVE responses have been
   specified: "y", "n", and "m".  These statuses are particularly useful
   for readers, since they describe local posting rights.  However,
   several other statuses are in use that are primarily useful for peers
   as they mainly describe how remote articles coming from peers are
   locally handled by a given news server.  This memo defines three
   other values for the status field in LIST ACTIVE responses: "x", "j",
   and "=" followed by the name of a newsgroup.

The new wording Alfred suggests is correct.

I ask the working group:
After reading the explanations below, if you think that my wording
needs being changed in RFC 6048, please tell me and I will naturally
open an erratum.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« La science consiste à passer d'un étonnement à l'autre. »
  (Aristote)