Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!coolidge
From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Just how useful is crossposting?
Summary: Ack!
Message-ID: <1989Nov17.173753.9790@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 17:37:53 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca> <838@ccssrv.UUCP>
Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
Lines: 37

perry@ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison) writes:
>How about (as an amendment to whatever RFC):

>    If the Newsgroups: line specifies more than one group, the Followup-To:
>    line is required, and must contain either a single valid group name, or
>    an email address, or the word "poster".  (In the latter two cases
>    followups are treated as replies.)

>Implementation could easily be made upward compatible.  New (or revised)
>posting programs would prompt for the followup group, if not specified.
>To maximize compliance in the presence of older posting programs, the
>originating transport program (e.g.  inews) could check for cross-postings
>without a Followup-To: and insert one, specifying the first-listed newsgroup.

ACK! Not only do we have a bogus requirement that only one group
contain followups, but we get to engage in gratuitous header
rewriting to enforce it. There are many useful discussions that
really belong to more than one group. Forcing followups to
just one group means that the readers of one group or the other
will be inconvenienced by having to hunt for the responses.
Discussions are more likely to diverge, furthur inconveniencing
readers.

Crosspostings are a feature, not a bug. They decrease the amount of
time readers have to spend chasing all over the namespace trying to
find the articles they're interested in. I ask again: what problem
exactly are you (those trying to modify crossposting) trying to
solve?

--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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