nntp-extensions Newsgroup attributes

[Ian Davis]

Following on from the discussions in the usenet-format list I wonder how
feasible a scheme of adding attributes to newsgroups would be. These
attributes could be read by the News posting agent to make decisions
about the acceptable formats etc.

A command along the lines of

  ATTR newsgroup attribute-name

could retrieve these attributes.

Responses could be:

  250 attribute-name attribute-value
  450 Attribute not found

Possible attributes would include:

  charset
  language
  mime-postings  (taking values disallowed/allowed)
  html-postings
  binary-postings
  faq-url
  followup-to (the recommended group for followups)

User agents could then prevent users from posting innapropriate material
to groups that have specified that they don't want it.

Attributes would be inherited down hierarchies unless explicitly
overridden, so by default foo.bar.misc would have the same attributes as
foo.bar.

These attributes would have to be managed by an attribute registry in a
similar manner to the proposed NNTP extensions registry.

Just my thoughts...

.id.