[net.news] Article receipt verification

hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey) (08/02/85)

I was just thinking that one way to help insure that articles "make the
rounds" is by assigning article numbers.  This would only work in the
current environment for moderated groups.

Basically, the posting site would specify the message ID.  The article
would be saved under that message ID number on every system which is running
"updated" software.  Any lost messages could be quickly identified, and
I suspect a mechanism to retransmit from upstream sites could easily be
implemented (instead of sending the request to sites not in the Path:, ...).

The checkgroups posting could be extended to include the latest article
number.

This would be useful for mod.sources, mod.map.whatever, and mod.std.all.

Several of the moderators already post Volume/Issue numbers, but it is up
to the users to catch any omissions.

This mechanism would also greatly assist in the distribution of "mandatory"
articles (like net etiquette stuff) in newsgroups.
-- 
Hokey           ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
		  314-725-9492