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From: javoskamp@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jeff Voskamp)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Using "local" as a newsgroup name considered harmful
Message-ID: <14347@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: Sun, 16-Aug-87 13:42:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.14347
Posted: Sun Aug 16 13:42:12 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Aug-87 00:42:59 EDT
References: <434@acornrc.UUCP> <587@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: javoskamp@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jeff Voskamp)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 44
Summary: distribution is tricky at best.
Xref: mnetor news.admin:854 news.software.b:758

In article <587@its63b.ed.ac.uk> scott@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Scott Larnach) writes:
>We have a local.general newsgroup too, and it turns out that the
>article in question, namely:
>+--
>| From: root@ozdaltx.UUCP (root)
>| Newsgroups: sci.med,local.general
>| Subject: STRESS DIET :-)
>| Message-ID: <4157@ozdaltx.UUCP>
>+--
>gets to our site (since we get sci.med) and then inews inserts it into
>both newsgroups. So _our_ local newsgroup gets anything posted to
>someone else's local group that's cross-posted to a worldwide group!
>
>I still run 2.10.3 news, which removes unknown newsgroups from the
>Newsgroups: line. This feature was removed in 2.11 I think. Perhaps it
>should be reinstated for "local.*". The only other thing I can think
>of offhand is to stop crossposting between local.* and anything else.

That still won't solve the problem completely (removing local.* groups
that is).  A few months back everyone here was surprised to see an
posting for a gay/lesbian dance show up in the local group uw.general.
The surprise was not that the dance was advertized, but that it was at
the University of Wisconsin.  It seems that the dance was cross posted
to soc.motss and uw.general (i.e. University of Wisconsin general
announcements), wandered across the country in soc.motss and fell into
our uw.general.

One solution would be to have some option for news that will remove a
selected list of news groups, not all unknown ones (a file like
/usr/lib/news/localgroups or the like).  In this way you could remove
all the groups which are local to your site and still pass along news
that is cross-posted to several groups, only some of which you
offically receive. You might have to define which groups get cut out on 
a machine by machine basis, but once it was set up you could forget
about it.

Jeff Voskamp

Opinions are my own. As to software - I don't know, I've never seen the source.
-- 
This should be fine, but I wouldn't put my life on the line over it.
bang path: {allegra,decvax,utzoo,clyde}!watmath!javoskamp 
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