* Originally in ALL-POLITICS
* Crossposted in crossfire
* Crossposted in debate
* Crossposted in politics
* Crossposted in POL_DISORDER
* Crossposted in POL_INC
* Crossposted in MATZDOBRE
* Crossposted in WIN95
* Crossposted in LINUX

Hello All!

**IF YOU USE DOCSPLACE BBS TO POST FIDONET MESSAGES, THIS APPLIES TO YOU**

Fidonet messages contain alot more info that gets used by the software to:

* scan it out to the network

* toss it in from the network

But has no relevance to the average user.

An example of this can be found by looking at the headers of any email message
there is alot more info than just from/to/subject.

I am the uplink mailhub for DOCSPLACE, over the years I have noted that my
system was trapping random messages from DOCSPLACE as duplicates that
shouldnt have been flagged as such. When a message gets flagged as a
duplicate, it goes no further.

With the help of Fellow Sysop Dale Shipp, he and I both believe we have
found the culprit, after all this time, the common denominator has been
identified.

Part of the problem has to do with the message editor and QWK door of Docs
BBS setup, which he cannot control, the other part has to do with the dupe
checking routines of my tosser.

Fidonet messages contain header control lines, most of which begin with an
"{at}" sign. The ones involved in this issue help identify each
message individually with a unique identifying number, the originating
system and the system that originated the message being replied to. It
appears that nearly every false duplicate is indeed a message reply, not a
new or original message.

What is happening in the case of these false duplicates is that the person
replying is including in the body of their message quotes, a few of the
message control lines of the message they are repling to.

What is supposed to happen is the editor should change the {at} symbol to a
different character such as a # sign or something other than {at}. However on
the otherhand when this message reply gets to my system, my dupe checker
should in theory ignore the quoted control info because it is being
prefixed with the usual quotation characters such as "->" or
"initials>".

Because my system has seen the original message already, when it sees the
quoted control info in this type of reply, it assumes it is a dupe.

Preferably, the setup on Docs should alter the control character when it
encounters it in a uploaded message from the QWK door or when a reply is
being authored by the user while online... A similiar preference is that my
tosser should ignore control info that is prefixed by any character other
than what is supposed to be there.

It is not a perfect world, the developer of Docs software hasnt done much
with the Fidonet side of it for years now and the developers of my tosser
are also not as abundant, my tosser is open source, Docs is proprietary
commercial.

I will still attempt to contact someone whom might still be toying with the
codebase for my tosser, most of it was done in Eastern Europe but Fidonet
isnt much to code for when that group can concentrate on Rogue Security
Software and earn money.. :-/ Not saying that the same persons are
involved, but it is that area where most of that stuff comes from now.

The work around for this issue is pretty straight forward...

When using Docsplace to reply to Fidonet Messages and you quote a message..

DO NOT LEAVE WITHIN THE MESSAGE BODY OF YOUR MESSAGES, QUOTED OR NOT...

Any line that begins with a "{at}"


Examples: (Pretend # is {at})

#MSGID ?:???/??? ????????
#REPLYID ?:???/??? ????????

The "?" can be any number and in the last octet also a letter.

The best thing to do is not quote any control info back, do not include it
in your quotes, it is irrelevant anyway from a users point of view.

If you see any text that has a {at} sign in column one, edit that line out of
your quotes.

Excepting Test Messages to reveal this issue, I have noted false dupes written by:

JohnJWilson
Wayne Chirnside

Dont quote the control info and all will be well, there is no need to quote
it anyway unless specifically asked to do so.

If I can get my tosser refined, I will let you know.

==
Ross
Fidonet Feeds Or Fidonet In Your Newsreader: http://www.easternstar.info
E-mail: ross(at)cassell(dot)us | Other Places: http://links.cassell.us
Fidonet Netmail Routing Chart Z1 Only: http://netmail.fidonet4u.info
... Democrat Is Code For Double Standards And Absolute Evil.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20060121