Questions about Archive-name: headers

[tp at mccall.com]

[This is cross posted to reach people who might actually know the answer.]

I have some questions about the Archive-name: pseudo-header. By way of
context, I post stuff to vmsnet.sources, both my own, and for people
without access to the group (and will be posting more stuff very soon).
vmsnet.sources is an UNmoderated sources group. It has been suggested to me
that I should use Archive-name: headers in these postings. It has been
suggested recently in one or more of alt.sources.d and comp.sources.d that
EVERYONE should use this header in source postings. I could hack up the
tools I use to include this info if it is really of any use to anyone,
which is what I'm trying to determine.

1) Is this really going to do anyone any good in an unmoderated sources
group? There obviously won't be any posting-number headers, since there is
nobody to assign the numbers. The info files for the moderated groups state
that the posting number header is for use by automatic archiving programs.
So is the archive-name header. Will these programs work in the absence of a
posting-number header?

2) Is anyone archiving vmsnet.sources anyway, or is this all academic at
this point? As far as I know, the automatic archivers that use this info
only run under unix. Are there really unix sites archive vmsnet.sources? If
so, are the archives accessible? (Nobody has yet volunteered to archive
vmsnet.sources.)

3) Would anyone archive vmsnet.sources if most of the postings did have
archive-name headers (I'm looking for specific volunteers here, not just
people who think someone else will do it)? Only archives that would be
accessible to the public by some means are interesting here. 

4) Would anyone archive vmsnet.sources if it were a moderated group and ALL
the postings had archive-name, posting number, and submitted-by headers
(ditto caveats from #3). (This can be arranged if there is an incentive.)

Basically, what I want to know is: is it worth the hassle, and if so,
specifically why? I don't argue that they are in general a moderately good
thing, but if that is an academic point, I'll worry about it some time in
the future.

As far as archive accessibility, FTP, mail servers, bitnet listserv's,
human mail servers :-), human tape servers :-) are all appreciated.
-- 
Terry Poot <tp at mccall.com>                The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp)     615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041        Manhattan, KS 66502, USA