On May 11, 2011, at 11:34 AM, Steve Atkins wrote:
On May 11, 2011, at 8:07 AM, Laura Atkins wrote:
On May 11, 2011, at 7:01 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
I'm not following this thread closely, but I thought I'd say something
about extended status codes. Part of the idea of extended status codes
is that you should be able to determine the likely source of the
problem by looking at the second facet of the status code. Or to put
it another way, the second facet of the status code is supposed to
indicate _who_ probably needs to fix the problem (e.g. the sender, the
MSA, a relay, the delivery agent, etc.)
I haven't implemented this, but I have to say I really like this approach.
Perhaps the proposal would benefit from making such distinctions in the new
codes it's registering.
If you're going to make the second facet of the status code be who probably
needs to fix the problem, you could also make the third facet point to where
they need to go to fix it.
It doesn't even need to be that detailed. 1 for this is internal (so you
need to contact the recipient domain) and 2 for this is external (so you
need to contact a third party). Then follow that with a URL pointing to the
third party or the postmaster / internal troubleshooting pages.
If there's a URL or human readable message that's all that's needed for
someone to diagnose the delivery problem (which is how it's commonly done
today). Adding additional computer readable information as an extended
response code is only useful if it's intended to be handled entirely
automatically - if you're going to put human eyeballs on it, the human
readable response is all you need, once you've used the SMTP response (e.g.
5xx) to triage.
one of the major reasons for enhanced status codes was to provide a
language-independent indication of the error. I certainly don't mind URLs
being used to supply more information (especially if done in multiple
languages) but I don't think it obviates the need for the enhanced status codes.
Keith