From: catwheezel@operamail.com 
  
 On 2007-11-11, D. Stussy  wrote: 
 > "Whiskers"  wrote in message 
 > news:20071110143904.1BD3.1.NOFFLE@ID-107770.user.individual.net... 
 >> On 2007-11-10, D. Stussy  wrote: 
  
 [...] 
  
 >> 24hoursupport.helpdesk seems to have a perfectly valid name apart from the 
 >> leading numeral - and it seems to pre-date the rules about that so gets 
 >> through on the 'already here' principle.  It's also quite a useful 
 >> resource. 
 > 
 > OK, so that's one group - out of 224+ that violate the rule of having a 
 leading 
 > letter in the first component of the name.  How about these others and 
 others 
 > that violate other rules?  RFC 850 (at 2.1.5) states that invalid groups 
 should 
 > be ignored, but it was written in June 1983; 24 years ago.  Is that still 
 the 
 > preferred behavior?  Or is it better to propagate such articles via the 
 "junk" 
 > group?  Granted, usenet is anarchy at its finest, but which behavior is 
 > popularly chosen? 
  
 My own personal local news-server rejects groups with 'invalid' names (but 
 allows those with a leading numeral). 
  
 As far as the public news-servers are concerned, I suspect that weeding out 
 the inactive groups from their feed is probably a matter of the 
 administrator's awareness, inclination, and time.  End users don't have to 
 subscribe to groups they aren't interested in so it isn't really a problem 
 is it? 
  
 "Inactive" is probably a fairer judgement to apply than "not named in 
 accordance with the RFCs". 
  
 -- 
 -- ^^^^^^^^^^ 
 --  Whiskers 
 -- ~~~~~~~~~~ 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)