[Mailman-Developers] Dates again

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:31 AM -0500 2004-11-20, Steven Kuck wrote:

>  Since all of these messages are, in fact, being sent by my server I think
>  it quite reasonable to change the "Date" to reflect the time that it was
>  processed and changed by the server.

	The problem is that you can't tell which "Date:" headers are good 
and which ones aren't.  The message may have been held up in a queue 
for several days, or the date it was sent could be off by several 
days.  By the time the message gets to you, it is impossible to 
distinguish between these two events.

	IMO, you should adhere to the principle of minimal munging, and 
not replace a "Date:" header unless you can pretty conclusively prove 
that it was set wrong to begin with.

>                                        I'm the one who has to answer
>  questions about why the archive dates seem wrong and who is ultimately
>  responsible for the smooth operation of the service.  I would LIKE this
>  to be an option that I could set.  I do not have the time or inclination
>  to write the code to make this a user option.  However, since it something
>  I wanted applied to all of my lists, I added the code to copy the "Date"
>  field to "X-Original-Date" and put in the server's time as the "Date."

	I would be violently opposed to any system-wide modification that 
would arbitrarily replace all "Date:" headers with ones based on the 
time of reception.

	If there were a way to effectively detect when a "Date:" header 
was wrong and when it was okay, then I might be willing to allow the 
system to correct the "Date:" header in those particular cases.  If 
you've got a patch or additional code that can do that, I'd like to 
see it, although I can't promise it would be accepted by the Mailman 
developers for inclusion in an upcoming version.

>  PS  I considered sending this message from the year 2080 as I've had to
>  deal with, but I thought I'd give you a chance to implement this patch first.

	We've all had the problem.

>  PPS  No, I don't WANT there to be a "fuzzfactor" allowing "close enough"
>  dates.  Server Time Only.

	I can't speak for Barry, Tokio, or the other Mailman developers, 
but I would be violently opposed to a change of this sort.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.