Off-topic: Usenet archiving history

[Ben Finney]

David Bolen <db3l.net at gmail.com> writes:

> Individual messages could include an Expires: header if they wished,

Since we're already well off-topic: NNTP, HTTP, and email, and probably
other protocols as well, all deal with messages. They are all consistent
in defining a message [0] as having *exactly one* header.

Every time you call a field from the header “a header”, or refer to
the plural “headers of a message”, the IETF kills a kitten. You
don't want to hurt a kitten, do you?


[0] Okay, NNTP calls a message an “article”, and the header is
composed of “lines” where other protocols call them “fields” (since
there can be multiple lines per field), but that's no excuse.

-- 
 \     “If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.” |
  `\                                                     —Groucho Marx |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney