> I've recombined these because they have an important connection, the
> notion that the pronouncements of ITU, ANSI, IEEE, ATM Forum, the WAP
> consortium, and the IETF are somehow necessarily better than those of any
> other arbitrary group of people.
none of these is an 'arbitrary' group of people. the thing that makes one
group different from another, and potentially impacts the quality of
that group's work, is the kinds of people that each group attracts -
their talents, their values, their kinds of expertise, their culture,
and their ability to work together to acheive common goals.
> Despite IETF snobbery, Precedence: has decades of use.
Precedence has decades of *varying* and "conflicting* use.
That's not a result of IETF snobbery, that's a result of poor
design in the first place and, subsequently, several instances
of J. Random email hacker deciding (incorrectly), in absence
of any published definition of the Precedence field, that
Precedence already did more-or-less what he/she wanted and
there was no need to define a new field that did the right thing.
> It has defects as
> a vacation program tamer, but those would be better fixed by coming up
> with a replacement than by ignoring the problem.
you don't need a 'replacement' header field to keep vacation from
replying. all you have to do is not send an auto-reply when the
recipient's address doesn't appear in the To or Cc header field.
> > > In other words, the IETF itself is not above some standads bending..
> >
> > what standard are you referring to?
>
> How about hoping that X-Loop will be preserved by those peered mailing
> lists and other gateways and so prevent loops?
fine with me. but I don't see what this has to do with the IETF list.
As for the drivel about AOL proprietary protocols being standards:
You can act like Humpty Dumpty if you want to, but don't pretend
that anyone else is going to listen.
Keith
