Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!coolidge
From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Just how useful is crossposting?
Message-ID: <1989Nov14.181851.1669@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 89 18:18:51 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca>
Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
Lines: 50

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I have come to wonder if crossposting is all that useful in discussion
>groups.  On ClariNet, I use it a lot for news articles, where wire items
>that cover multiple topics are posted to multiple groups.

I'm fairly certain that it is useful. The real value seems to come in
when a discussion has gone on for a while and someone decides that
it's a good time to 'call in the experts'. The 'experts' from another
group can contribute without the original posters having to group-
chase all over the place.

>But on other systems (Usenet is the only one I know of that supports
>cross-posting so extensively) I just don't see much manual crossposting.
>(ie. posting N times to N groups)  In fact, I see manual crossposting on
>USENET even more than I see it elsewhere.  Am I alone in this?

I think people don't do manual crossposting because it's difficult
and because the local culture is against it. Most of Illinois runs
notes, not news. Notes doesn't have crossposting. In the local
notesfiles (aka newsgroups) people _do_ manually crosspost every
so often. This winds up being very annoying, because two separate
local groups are discussing the same thing --- and half the time
the same point gets made in each discussion because one set of people
didn't know that the other set was arguing that point.

>I would think that perhaps if an original article is crossposted, we should
>get down to it and insist the followups be in one group.  That should either
>be a group picked in a followup-to line, or the first group, or followers-up
>should be asked to pick which of the groups they are going to reply within.

I don't like this, mainly because in the case of discussions that
_do_ belong in two groups at the same time people who only read
one group have to subscribe to the other one or miss out. This
happens often enough that I think crossposting is a useful
solution. I think the entire point of newsgroups is to section off
the discussion space and make it easier for people to find others
talking about what they want to discuss. When the newsgroup system
would hinder instead of helping that goal (like in systems without
crossposting, where newsgroups hide discussions), it's better to
work around the newsgroup system. Crossposting does that by allowing
'virtual newsgroups' specific to one discussion to temporarily exist.

--John

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John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1989 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
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