Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!lll-winken!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: <1989Nov15.235501.9085@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 15 Nov 89 23:55:01 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca> <25607AED.662@ateng.com> <1989Nov15.141902.6408@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us>
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Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
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zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) writes:
>>>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.
>>Not insist.  Make the default, yes, but not insist.
>Don't insist, in fact, make it difficult to do.  If an article is 
>posted to a set of reasonable groups, followups to it *should* stay in 
>all the groups (at least until the discussion wanders so far off track 
>that it no longer belongs in some of the groups).  It's very annoying 
>to have either disappearing threads or have to go track down and 
>subscribe to a newsgroup you are not generally interested to find the 
>responses to some article.  

I agree. Trying to follow a discussion in multiple newsgroups is a
major pain. It's much easier to simply use crossposting the way
it was intended to be used: to make it _easier_ to find the
information you're interested in. I've seen many cases where someone
tried to "help" by limiting followups to only one group (when
both were clearly appropriate), and they were usually met with
(IMHO justified) protests and flames. Limiting a discussion
appropriate to multiple groups to just one of the groups doesn't
help anyone; it hinders the readers of one group or the other in
their attempts to find information useful to them.

Even worse: what happens if two different people reply to the
article, each aiming follow-ups to a different group. Then
third parties re-crosspost their responses, because it _is_
appropriate to both groups. Now readers in _both_ groups are
seeing responses to articles they've never seen. Argh! Sounds
like the principle of _maximum_ inconvenience to me...

>What problem are you trying to fix?

That's what I've been wondering. This doesn't stop the irrelevant
crossposting problem --- it just ensures that only one group's
readers will see the flamage resulting. Stopping crossposts
entirely just leads to the broad crossposters multiposting and
wasting everyone's disk space. It also makes it harder to find
the articles I'm interested in, because I have to paw through
even more groups.

--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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