Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!Firewall!uunet!coplex!disk!corpane!herman
From: herman@corpane.uucp (Harry Herman)
Subject: Re: Why is my post being rejected?
Message-ID: <1991Jun17.111656.2692@corpane.uucp>
Organization: Corpane Industries Inc.
References: <14JUN91.15182407@nerus.pfc.mit.edu> <1991Jun15.020233.14816@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1991 11:16:56 GMT
Lines: 34

In <1991Jun15.020233.14816@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy Behrens) writes:


>The polite thing to do is to summarize the quotation: you rarely need
>to repeat the whole thing.  (Besides, your audience has probably just
>read the article you're citing).  Since people are often lazy, your news
>program is enforcing the polite behavior.

>Andy

Not necessarily.  It is not unusual for me to see replies to articles that
I have never seen the original.  I could have just joined the group (or
started reading again for the first time in a long time) and the original
has expired.  Our news feed is intermittent, so it is possible that the
original never got here.  I have read that C-News is rejecting articles,
so a site between the original and myself may have rejected the original.
The original could have been posted to different group(s) than the reply,
such that I am seeing the reply in a different newsgroup than the original
was in (and possibly I don't read the group(s) the original was in).  And
there are probably other reasons.  If you read a newsgroup every day, it
is possible that the path from the original to the replyer and the replyer
to you is shorter than the path from the original to you, especially if
the replyer is a "neighbor" to the original.  I have seen replies show
up on our system before the original.  Also, if systems do NOT keep
their clocks set to the correct hour and minute, it is possible for news
readers to sort the articles such that you see the reply first.  And I
am sure there are other reasons.

I am not saying that the whole article needs to be included, I am just
saying that you cannot ASSUME that whoever reads the reply has seen the
original.

				Harry Herman
				herman@corpane