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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Using "local" as a newsgroup name considered harmful
Message-ID: <8481@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 13:26:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8481
Posted: Tue Aug 25 13:26:12 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 13:26:12 EDT
References: <434@acornrc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 30

Making the group names unique would be the preferred solution in some
ways, but this is hard to retrofit onto the entire universe.  It also
would be a considerable pain to have to type world.na.can.ont.tor.ut.vlsi
to get the UofT VLSI newsgroup.  (This is arguably a user-interface
issue, but it's one that can't be ignored when the current user-interface
software doesn't do anything intelligent about it.)

Unfortunately, it is difficult to devise another solution that really
works without unfortunate side effects.  Stripping inappropriate groups
out of the Newsgroups line causes trouble when news can loop out of a
"local newsgroup area" and back in; this applies equally to stripping
when the article leaves the area and to stripping when it enters from
outside.  (In addition, Geoff and I have strong religious prejudices
against header alteration of any kind, and would prefer not to add more
of it on top of the bits that rnews already has to do.)  Leaving the
inappropriate groups in the header but not posting the article to them
is fine for the sites at the border of the local area, who know that the
article came in from outside, but doesn't work for sites farther in.
And again it does the wrong thing when news loops via outside sites.
Restricting the distribution of cross-posted stuff to the smallest common
region would work, sort of, once the restriction code was widespread, but
makes life awkward when one really *wants* to post something to both a
local group and a global one (for example, a site-is-defunct notice to
both ont.uucp and news.config).  This may be the least of the evils,
though.

Any other ideas?
-- 
"There's a lot more to do in space   |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
than sending people to Mars." --Bova | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry