INTERNET-DRAFT                               Charles H. Lindsey
Usenet Format Working Group                  University of Manchester
                                             July 2001

8.1. General principles to be followed

8.1.  General principles to be followed
   There are two important principles that news implementors (and
   administrators) need to keep in mind. The first is the well-known
   Internet Robustness Principle:

        Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
        send.

   However, in the case of news there is an even more important
   principle, derived from a much older code of practice, the
   Hippocratic Oath (we will thus call this the Hippocratic Principle):

        First, do no harm.

   It is VITAL to realize that decisions which might be merely
   suboptimal in a smaller context can become devastating mistakes when
   amplified by the actions of thousands of hosts within a few minutes.



   In the case of gateways, the primary corollary to this is:

        Cause no loops.

Diffs to previous draft

--- {draft-04}	Wed Jul 11 21:56:10 2001
+++ {draft-05}	Wed Jul 11 21:56:10 2001
@@ -16,9 +16,9 @@
    suboptimal in a smaller context can become devastating mistakes when
    amplified by the actions of thousands of hosts within a few minutes.
 
-   In the case of gateways, the primary corollary to this is:
 
 
+   In the case of gateways, the primary corollary to this is:
 
         Cause no loops.