eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (06/15/91)
In article <9106142131.aa04662@art-sy.detroit.mi.us> chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us (j chapman flack) writes: >How about allowing Expires: to take an absolute date, as it does now, or a >relative date, say in the syntax of at(1), like now + 30 days. Interpret the >relative date as relative to the article's arrival date That's not the point of Expires:. It's there to fix a time in relation to the real world, so event announcements will go away after their usefulness has passed, or to "sunset" stuff like the FAQ postings to force content review, and ensure periodic reposting (otherwise sites that join the net never see them). It helps tremendously to have global agreement on when that is. I don't see why *any* article should bear an Expires: more than three months in the future. It really f---s things up when minart is artificially low because some bozo used a ludicrous Expires:. A newsgroup with true "permanent value" (e.g. news.announce.important) is a good candidate for administrative retention, hence Expires: is unneeded there. Followups to news.software.b please; we've drifted off the original topic. -=EPS=-