Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!uunet!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: sys file entries for CNEWS
Message-ID: <1991Mar28.194737.5337@looking.on.ca>
Date: 28 Mar 91 19:47:37 GMT
References: <1991Mar18.170511.6535@st_nik!swindon.ingr.com> <1991Mar19.224950.4653@zoo.toronto.edu> <449@skyking.UUCP> <1991Mar23.193554.25944@looking.on.ca> <AD}=J-%@rpi.edu> <1991Mar23.220933.27563@looking.on.ca> <1991Mar27.180910.584@eci386.uucp>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 26

There is no need to force the bay area hierarchy and the bay area
distribution to have a different name.  I merely suggest we do it to force
home the concept that the two are different.

Giving distributions and hierarchies the same name has caused a lot of
trouble.

Many people outside an area are interested in its distribution.  Alumni of
Stanford read Stanford groups at MIT.   However, they are not likely to
be interested in "used car for sale" postings limited to the Stanford
geographical area.

This is all an unfortunate byproduct of B news, made worse when C news properly
split them out but didn't go all the way in splitting them out.

In many areas of the net, the use of a Distribution header to limit
distribution of an article in a netwide group simply doesn't work properly
at all any more.  Am I the only one who considers this a serious trend that
should be averted now?

In NewsClip, I defined synonyms for the distributions, so that you could
refer to the "site", "company", "city", "state/province", "country" etc.
distributions and a local mapping would put these on to the right thing.
This may make sense in other places, too.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473