On 1/22/2020 8:13 PM, James Cook via agora-discussion wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 at 02:11, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion > <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: >> Why are we reading the date-stamping to refer to the date-stamp of the >> original message? I would think it obvious that the relevant message is the >> one to the public forum, not the original one which wasn’t to the public >> forum. >> >> -Aris > > I think this is tricky. I haven't thought about it too carefuly, but > here's a possible argument for saying it should be the date stamp on > the original message.
A while back (several years now) there were distribution issues, and to make a point ais523 (I think) forged a date header so that a message showed up in the forum with a backdate of several years. It was generally agreed that, technically speaking, the date used should be the stamp (typically buried in the full headers) on which the message reaches the forum. This takes care of a lot of this sort of nonsense. However, it's a simple fact that, it would be beyond a reasonable effort for officers, in recordkeeping timestamps, to have to dig for said headers, given that most mail clients hide this data and display the send date. The uneasy compromise we reached was something like "the send date (most commonly displayed) is, prima facie, the stamp of record. However, if there are significant gaps between that date and the listserv arrival date (that comes to light if messages don't show up for a while), using the listserv arrival date is warranted." Not perfect at all. Naturally this leads to some discrepancies/issues e.g. if bids come in seconds before an auction ends but aren't delivered until an hour afterwards. But it would take care of this current issue somewhat. -G.
