Xref: utzoo news.admin:14069 news.software.b:7660 news.software.anu-news:2819
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!sloane
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b,news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Misuse, confusion, re "Distribution: " header?
Message-ID: <1991May3.151126.30347@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 3 May 91 20:11:26 GMT
References: <1991Apr29.142220.2308@dcs.simpact.com> <1991Apr30.033822.27061@ims.alaska.edu> <1991May3.082931.284@biivax.dp.beckman.com>
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 20

In article <1991May3.082931.284@biivax.dp.beckman.com>,
 dsroberts@biivax.dp.beckman.com writes:
> I have run into a bit of confusion on my part with the Distribution: for
> BIONET. One of the "owners" of bionet claims that since bionet is not part of
> the USENET hierarchy, a valid distribution for bionet is bionet, it works as
> both a newsgroup hierarchy and geographic distribution.  Is distribution:
> limited to strictly geographic names like "world" or "ca", or are hierarchies
> with special distribution like "bionet" and "vmsnet" actually valid
> distributions?

Sorry, but there aren't any hard rules about ANYTHING in the news
game. If the "owners" of bionet think it is both a distribution and a
hierarchy, then it must be.  If that is what they put in their
articles, and you want to see the articles, then you have to play the
game their way.  I have found that the old B news syntax in the
NEWS.SYS file of mixing the groups and distributions together is the
easist way to deal with problems like this.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444