usefor-article-08 August 2002
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8.2.2. Procedure to be followed by Injecting Agents
A injecting agent receives proto-articles from posting and followup
agents. It verifies them, adds headers where required and then either
forwards them to a moderator or injects them by passing them to
serving or relaying agents.
If an injecting agent receives an otherwise valid article that has
already been injected it SHOULD either act as if it is a relaying
agent or else pass the article on to a relaying agent completely
unaltered. Exceptionally, it MAY reinject the article, perhaps as a
part of some complex gatewaying process (in which case it will add a
second '%' path-delimiter to the Path-header). It MUST NOT forward
an already injected article to a moderator.
An injecting agent processes articles as follows:
1. It MUST remove any Injector-Info- or Complaints-To-header already
present (though it might be useful to copy them to suitable X-
headers). It SHOULD likewise remove any NNTP-Posting-Host or other
undocumented tracing header.
2. It SHOULD verify that the article is from a trusted source.
However, it MAY allow articles in which headers contain "forged"
email addresses, that is, addresses which are not valid for the
known and trusted source, especially if they end in ".invalid".
3. It MUST reject any article whose Date-header is more than 24 hours
into the past or into the future (cf. 5.1).
4. It MUST reject any article that does not have the correct
mandatory headers for a proto-article (5 and 8.2.1) present, or
which contains any header that does not have legal contents. In
particular, it MUST reject any article whose Newsgroups-header or
Followup-To-header contains an encoded newsgroup-name (5.5.2);
alternatively, it MAY decode those newsgroup-names and continue
(this being a useful service for moderators using that injecting
agent, see 8.7). It SHOULD reject any article which contains any
header deprecated for Netnews (4.2.1).
5. If the article is rejected (for reasons given above, or for other
formatting errors or matters of site policy) the posting agent
SHOULD be informed (such as via an NNTP 44x response code) that
posting has failed and the article MUST NOT then be processed
further.
6. The Message-ID and Date-headers (and their contents) MUST be added
when not already present.
7. A Path-header with a tail-entry (5.6.3) MUST be correctly added if
not already present (except that it SHOULD NOT be added if the
article is to be forwarded to a moderator).
8. The path-identity of the injecting agent with a '%' path-delimiter
(5.6.2) MUST be prepended to the Path-header; moreover, that
path-identity MUST be an FQDN mailable address (5.6.2).
9 An Injector-Info-header (6.19) SHOULD be added, identifying the
trusted source of the article, and a suitable Complaints-To-header
(6.20) MAY be added (except that these two headers SHOULD NOT be
added if the article is to be forwarded to a moderator).
10.The injecting agent MUST NOT alter the body of the article in any
way. It MAY add other headers not already provided by the poster,
but SHOULD NOT alter, delete, or reorder any existing header, with
the specific exception of "tracing" headers such as Injector-Info
and Complaints-To, which are to be removed as already mentioned.
NOTE: The addition of non-mandatory headers by the injecting
agent may alter the posting agent's preferred presentation of
information. In particular, adding a Sender-header that exposes
a sender's mailbox has privacy implications; where the main or
only purpose for doing so is as tracing information, it is
preferable to use instead one of the options provided for the
Injector-Info header (6.19.1).
11.If the Newsgroups-header contains no moderated groups, or if it
contains an Approved-header, the injecting agent forwards the
article to one or more relaying or serving agents.
12.Otherwise, when the Newsgroups-header contains one or more
moderated groups and the article does NOT contain an Approved-
header, the injecting agent MUST forward it to the moderator of
the first (leftmost) moderated group listed in the Newsgroups-
header via email. There are two possibilities for doing this:
(a) The complete article is encapsulated (headers and all) within
the email, preferably using the Content-Type
"application/news-transmission" (6.21.6.1) with any usage
parameter set to "moderate". Moreover, there SHOULD NOT be
more than one encapsulated article within the one email.
This method has the advantage of removing any possible
conflict between Netnews and Email headers, or of changes to
those headers during transport through email (and in
particular, it ensures that any UTF8-xtra-chars within those
headers will pass safely through any email transport even if
it is 8bit-unsafe).
(b) The article is sent as an email as it stands, with the
addition of such extra headers (e.g. a To-header) as are
necessary for an email. Since the article is, in effect,
being gatewayed into Email, the provisions of section 8.8.1
apply. In particular, if the headers contain any UTF8-xtra-
chars, it may be necessary to apply encodings, specifically
the encoding defined in section 5.5.2 in the case of the
article's Newsgroups- and Followup-To-headers.
Although both of these methods have seen use in the past, the
preponderance of current usage on Usenet has been for method (b)
and many moderators are ill-prepared to deal with method (a).
Therefore, method (a) SHOULD NOT be used until such time as the
majority of moderators are able to accept it.
13.This standard does not prescribe how the email address of the
moderator is to be determined, that being a matter of policy to be
arranged by the agency responsible for the oversight of each
hierarchy. Nevertheless, there do exist various agents worldwide
which provide the service of forwarding to moderators, and the
address to use with them is obtained as follows:
(a) Each '.' in the newsgroup-name is replaced with a '-'.
(b) If the newsgroup-name contains any UTF8-xtra-char, it is
encoded as described in section 5.5.2.
(c) The result of these operations is used as the local-part of
the mailbox of the agent. For example, articles intended for
"news.announce.important" would be emailed to "news-
announce-important@forwardingagent.example".
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#Diff to first older
--- ../usefor-article-07/Procedure_to_be_followed_by_Injecting_Agents.out May 2002
+++ ../usefor-article-08/Procedure_to_be_followed_by_Injecting_Agents.out August 2002
@@ -30,16 +30,20 @@
4. It MUST reject any article that does not have the correct
mandatory headers for a proto-article (5 and 8.2.1) present, or
- which contains any header that does not have legal contents, and
- it SHOULD reject any article which contains any header deprecated
- for Netnews (4.2.1).
-
- 5. If the article is rejected, or is otherwise incorrectly formatted
- or unacceptable due to site policy, the posting agent MUST be
- informed (such as via an NNTP 44x response code) that posting has
- failed and the article MUST NOT then be processed further.
-
- 6. The Message-ID and Date-headers (and their content) MUST be added
+ which contains any header that does not have legal contents. In
+ particular, it MUST reject any article whose Newsgroups-header or
+ Followup-To-header contains an encoded newsgroup-name (5.5.2);
+ alternatively, it MAY decode those newsgroup-names and continue
+ (this being a useful service for moderators using that injecting
+ agent, see 8.7). It SHOULD reject any article which contains any
+ header deprecated for Netnews (4.2.1).
+
+ 5. If the article is rejected (for reasons given above, or for other
+ formatting errors or matters of site policy) the posting agent
+ SHOULD be informed (such as via an NNTP 44x response code) that
+ posting has failed and the article MUST NOT then be processed
+ further.
+ 6. The Message-ID and Date-headers (and their contents) MUST be added
when not already present.
7. A Path-header with a tail-entry (5.6.3) MUST be correctly added if
@@ -60,6 +64,7 @@
but SHOULD NOT alter, delete, or reorder any existing header, with
the specific exception of "tracing" headers such as Injector-Info
and Complaints-To, which are to be removed as already mentioned.
+
NOTE: The addition of non-mandatory headers by the injecting
agent may alter the posting agent's preferred presentation of
information. In particular, adding a Sender-header that exposes
@@ -68,35 +73,56 @@
preferable to use instead one of the options provided for the
Injector-Info header (6.19.1).
- 11.If the Newsgroups line contains one or more moderated groups and
- the article does NOT contain an Approved-header, then the
- injecting agent MUST forward it to the moderator of the first
- (leftmost) moderated group listed in the Newsgroups line via
- email. The complete article SHOULD be encapsulated (headers and
- all) within the email, preferably using the Content-Type
- "application/news-transmission" (6.21.6.1).
-
- NOTE: This standard does not prescribe how the email address of
- the moderator is to be determined, that being a matter of policy
- to be arranged by the agency responsible for the oversight of
- each hierarchy. Nevertheless, there do exist various agents
- worldwide which provide the service of forwarding to moderators,
- and the address to use with them is obtained by replacing each
- '.' in the newsgroups-name with a '-'. For example, articles
- intended for "news.announce.important" would be emailed to
- "new-announce-important@forwardingagent.example".
-[If the IDNS people come up with specific proposals before this draft is
-finally submitted, we may be able to replace the following paragraph.]
-
- In the event that the newsgroup-name contains any UTF8-xtra-
- char, this will result in an addr-spec whose local-part is not
- consistent the present email standards ([RFC2822]). It is
- anticipated that extensions to those standards currently under
- consideration will in due course provide means for encoding such
- local-parts but, in the meantime, agencies responsible for
- creating moderated newsgroups with such names will need to make
- special arrangements.
-
- 12.Otherwise, the injecting agent forwards the article to one or more
- relaying or serving agents.
+ 11.If the Newsgroups-header contains no moderated groups, or if it
+ contains an Approved-header, the injecting agent forwards the
+ article to one or more relaying or serving agents.
+
+ 12.Otherwise, when the Newsgroups-header contains one or more
+ moderated groups and the article does NOT contain an Approved-
+ header, the injecting agent MUST forward it to the moderator of
+ the first (leftmost) moderated group listed in the Newsgroups-
+ header via email. There are two possibilities for doing this:
+
+ (a) The complete article is encapsulated (headers and all) within
+ the email, preferably using the Content-Type
+ "application/news-transmission" (6.21.6.1) with any usage
+ parameter set to "moderate". Moreover, there SHOULD NOT be
+ more than one encapsulated article within the one email.
+ This method has the advantage of removing any possible
+ conflict between Netnews and Email headers, or of changes to
+ those headers during transport through email (and in
+ particular, it ensures that any UTF8-xtra-chars within those
+ headers will pass safely through any email transport even if
+ it is 8bit-unsafe).
+ (b) The article is sent as an email as it stands, with the
+ addition of such extra headers (e.g. a To-header) as are
+ necessary for an email. Since the article is, in effect,
+ being gatewayed into Email, the provisions of section 8.8.1
+ apply. In particular, if the headers contain any UTF8-xtra-
+ chars, it may be necessary to apply encodings, specifically
+ the encoding defined in section 5.5.2 in the case of the
+ article's Newsgroups- and Followup-To-headers.
+
+ Although both of these methods have seen use in the past, the
+ preponderance of current usage on Usenet has been for method (b)
+ and many moderators are ill-prepared to deal with method (a).
+ Therefore, method (a) SHOULD NOT be used until such time as the
+ majority of moderators are able to accept it.
+
+ 13.This standard does not prescribe how the email address of the
+ moderator is to be determined, that being a matter of policy to be
+ arranged by the agency responsible for the oversight of each
+ hierarchy. Nevertheless, there do exist various agents worldwide
+ which provide the service of forwarding to moderators, and the
+ address to use with them is obtained as follows:
+
+ (a) Each '.' in the newsgroup-name is replaced with a '-'.
+
+ (b) If the newsgroup-name contains any UTF8-xtra-char, it is
+ encoded as described in section 5.5.2.
+
+ (c) The result of these operations is used as the local-part of
+ the mailbox of the agent. For example, articles intended for
+ "news.announce.important" would be emailed to "news-
+ announce-important@forwardingagent.example".