Independently of the discussions of whether we need or ought
to have a universal disclaimer, I see some practical issues
with the details of David Alex Lamb's proposal. And I
gather that David's motivation is primarily practical, not
legal, so practical issues are important.
The first issue is visibility. An X-Disclaimer: header will
be invisible to far too many people, since most people use
newsreaders which present only a selection of "important"
headers. If most people don't see the X-Disclaimer:, then
it's of little use. In fact, this is a good argument for
making the aux header DISCLAIMER: rather than Disclaimer:.
Second, "based on form not content" will fail to register on
too many people. It's a great summary for those accustomed
to thinking in such terms, but that leaves out a large
segment of the population.
Third, "*.answers" isn't going to be universally understood.
Thus I suggest that the disclaimer be an auxiliary header:
Disclaimer: Approval for posting to news.answers and misc.answers is
based on following procedures. Content is not reviewed for
accuracy, completeness, or acceptability to any audience.
where "misc.answers" is replaced by the newsgroup name(s)
appropriate for the posting.
That's off the top of my head, and I acknowledge that it's
considerably more verbose than would be ideal. Other
suggestions? Perhaps even a URL for a more complete
explanation?
Edward Reid
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