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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!ptsfa!dsp
From: dsp@ptsfa.UUCP (David St.Pierre)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Using "local" as a newsgroup name considered harmful
Message-ID: <3335@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Aug-87 21:32:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.3335
Posted: Mon Aug 17 21:32:13 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Aug-87 03:10:41 EDT
References: <434@acornrc.UUCP> <587@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <328@sering.cwi.nl>
Reply-To: dsp@ptsfa.UUCP (David St.Pierre)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 36
Xref: mnetor news.admin:858 news.software.b:761

In article <328@sering.cwi.nl> piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) writes:
>
>Local or organizational newsgroups may have almost any name,
>not necessarily local.whatever; special treatment of local.*
>therefore is no solution. The same problem could occur when
>posting to a newsgroup but giving it a distribution "wider"
>than that of the newsgroup.
>Maybe the news software should refuse any such posting; but
>then it would have to know exactly what the distribution
>"levels" are.

Or maybe the news software could be a "tad" smarter about selecting
distributions. It currently seems to select the default distribution
based on the first newsgroup only.

Posting to pb.general and news.misc would give me a distribution of "pb",
our local newsgroups.

Posting to news.misc and pb.general gives me a default distribution of
"world".

If the user posts to multiple newsgroups and the default distribution
for any of them is not equal to "world", let that be the default. This 
basically goes back to regional distributions which is often what people
wanted in that case.  I don't think it's worth trying to make people post
to the most restrictive newsgroup first. People tend to think of a "natural"
category first (soc.motss) and a local one second - or at least some people
seem to.

I don't think the issue should be in refusing a posting, but rather
making the first choice the more restrictive one. Many people use the
default distribution without even looking at it.

-- 
David St. Pierre    415/823-6800  {ihnp4,lll-crg,ames,pyramid}!ptsfa!dsp
He smokes like a fish.