Date for Posts - How is it decided?
Folks --
What is the 'official' date for a post? I am the admin for a small, moderated where the following seems to be happening:
- The daily digest lists several posts from yesterday/early toady and has a delivery date of 'today'.
- The message archive can be used to show the exact day the message was posted (today or yesterday).
- Individual posts are being received with delivery dates exactly ONE MONTH in the FUTURE!
Is this a Mailman setting, or is could it be the moderator has set their clock incorrectly set?
Thanks in Advance, Drew Tenenholz
At 10:05 AM -0400 2006-09-04, Drew Tenenholz wrote:
What is the 'official' date for a post?
Normally, the official date for a message in the archives is taken from the "Date:" header which is put on the message by the sending mail client (MUA) or the first mail server (MTA) to touch the message. The Internet standards require that the "Date:" header be present on all messages, but some clients do not create them. Therefore, most mail servers will automatically add one if it is not already present.
The problem is that many clients have system dates that are seriously screwed up. They should be running the Network Time Protocol (NTP), but most of them don't even bother to do any kind of monitoring or setting of the date information.
Now, recent versions of Mailman have a way to deal with this issue -- see FAQ 3.63. However, this does require a change in the mm_cfg.py file, which has to be done by the site admin. If you are using a hosted list service, you may not be able to get support from the site admin to perform functions like this -- see FAQ 1.32.
-- Brad Knowles, brad@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
Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA. See http://www.lopsa.org/.
participants (2)
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Brad Knowles
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Drew Tenenholz