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From: edg@micropro.UUCP (Ed Greenberg)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Distribution woes
Message-ID: <198@micropro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Dec-85 15:17:39 EST
Article-I.D.: micropro.198
Posted: Wed Dec 18 15:17:39 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 02:46:51 EST
References: <4265@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <8041@ucla-cs.ARPA> <255@ut-dillo.UUCP>
Reply-To: edg@micropr.UUCP (Ed Greenberg)
Organization: MicroPro Int'l Corp., San Rafael, CA
Lines: 39

In article <255@ut-dillo.UUCP> darin@ut-dillo.UUCP (Darin Adler) writes:
>> Why aren't the newsgroups named by topic and distribution controlled by
>> a separate distribution line?
>
>It was my impression that 'net' in net.anything was the *default*
>distribution for articles.  Thus, local "versions" of a group are possible
>by overriding this default.  Of course, I don't know what happens with
>followup messages (I know how to do this in postnews).
>-- 
>Darin Adler	{gatech,harvard,ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!ut-dillo!darin

I know that the above is true in Pnews (the followup script that is part
of rn.  I recently hit F to follow up on an item in net.jokes.  I found
that pnews prompted me with a warning that said...
"This program posts news to many machines throughout the continent..."
							 ^^^^^^^^^
when I expected it to say "world."  Sure enough, the original posting
had a distribution line of "na" and my followup was initialized with the
same distribution.  

So... if you want to control distribution in a newsgroup, you can do so
by editing the "distribution:" line at the same time that you're editing
the article.  You can, for instance, post something to net.general with
a distribution of "local" or "ba" though doing so would be in violation
of protocols.  More to the point, you can post location specific jokes
to net.jokes and limit them to the location that will apprecite them,
and you can limit ANY posting in a net group to the US if you feel that
it doesn't belong overseas.  

Now, if we could teach this to certain persons posting ads for dinettes
in net.general we'd be in good shape.
					-e


-- 
Ed Greenberg; MicroPro International Corp. (disclaimer)
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