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From: icsu6000@caesar.cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Proper Distribution: entries?
Message-ID: <2827@caesar.cs.montana.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 89 07:13:21 GMT
Sender: news@caesar.cs.montana.edu
Reply-To: icsu6000@caesar.cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen)
Distribution: na
Organization: Montana State University, Dept. of Computer Science, Bozeman MT 59717
Lines: 30

I have a question on the proper entries for the Distribution header. 

As I understand it, the Distribution header is to limit the distribution
of an article to some logical or geographically related set of machines.  So
distributions of world go to every machine essentially, while distributions
of mt restrict the article to a Montana distribution, etc. etc.  Or you
can use Distribution entries to coordinate article distribution around
a business, or university in some coordinated fashion.

The question:

Are Distribution: entries of comp, rec, sci etc bogus?  Isn't that
implying 'near-world' distribution, as sys file entries dont as a general rule
distinguish between hierarchies and distributions?  Shouldn't these people
be using world, na, usa, state, etc. or some other name, but NOT the
hierarchy name?

Are there news systems that distinguish between top-level hierarchy names
and distributions?  How do they handle a 'Distribution: comp' header? Seems
to me they'd have to just put all the heirarchy names in the accepted
distributions field, otherwise they'd lose articles.

Or is this a problem of broken news-posting software?

Or is my brain just out to lunch?
--
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| Jaye Mathisen,systems manager       Internet: icsu6000@caesar.cs.montana.edu|
| 410 Roberts Hall                      BITNET: icsu6000@mtsunix1.bitnet      |
| Dept. of Computer Science	                                              |