> people who'used' rfc-ignorant, i dont use it any more, i cant afford it. i > took the advice of another list member and removed them.
The RFCs are not hard rules. They are widely accepted standards. Most of the RFCs are well thought out, and very good to follow. RFC-Ignorant is promoting the idea that the RFCs should be hard rules. I disagree with them. For example, I think that a good chunk of RFC 2124 ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2142.txt is elitist and WRONG. This is the one where they say you MUST have this email address, and you MUST have that email address. Basically it states that if you are an ISP you MUST have abuse@, ftp@, hostmaster@, info@, marketing@, news@, noc@, postmaster@, sales@, security@, support@, usenet@, uucp@, webmaster@, and www@ <yourdomain>. Other RFCs support many of these. I think this is poorly designed for the following reasons. 1) Welcome to the elitist English only club. a) I even apply this standard to requiring postmaster@. b) The net has grown, but the attitudes of many standards makers have not. c) Spreken se Doitch? Parly vous Fances? Hablando Espanole? Nu pa Ruski? Well, "abuse" is not spelled abuse in any of those. 2) It makes for admin issues if anything changes. a) Smaller ISPs have one person do all these things, larger ones have many, so on so forth. b) What if you miss just one when you add/change a service/personnel? Are you to be black listed? Now, every domain name on the internet has a DNS entry. Every DNS entry has a contact address. I think that address should be the primary contact for that domain, and the method for getting information on who to contact for all other issues. Larger organizations that have the time, trouble and structure to maintain lists on who does what could make this into an auto responder. That auto responder would give the correct addresses. The address could reflect a person or department, and even the language of the recipient. Sure, it adds one more step to contacting many places. BUT, it helps support the idea that the DNS entry is important, and should be correct. That part of the RFCs has far too LITTLE enforcement. I see the extra step as no major loss in comparison to that gain. It is also something that can be automated in testing. If a domain does not accept mail to the address listed in the DNS entry, no mail should be accepted from that domain. So I do not support most of the cause RFC-Ignorant is touting. I do agree with a few parts. 1) The WhoIs listed contacts should be reachable, which is what they are arguing with UUNet over. 2) DSN ( <> ) mail should be accepted. --Eric
