s-o-1036 June 1994

9. Propagation and Processing

Most aspects of news propagation and processing  are  imple-
mentation-specific.   The  basic propagation algorithms, and
certain details of how they  are  implemented,  nevertheless
need to be standard.

There  are  two  important principles that news implementors
(and administrators) need to keep in mind.  The first is the
well-known Internet Robustness Principle:

     Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

However, in the case of news there is an even more important
principle, derived from a much older code of  practice,  the
Hippocratic  Oath  (we  will  thus call this the Hippocratic
Principle):

     First, do no harm.

INTERNET DRAFT to be        NEWS                      sec. 9


It is VITAL to realize that decisions which might be  merely
suboptimal  in a smaller context can become devastating mis-
takes when amplified by the actions of  thousands  of  hosts
within a few hours.