Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!welty
From: welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Wish List re: Crossposting
Message-ID: <10877@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 17 May 88 23:11:27 GMT
References: <439@bacchus.DEC.COM> <52859@sun.uucp> <9879@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <53022@sun.uucp> <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> <6075@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 26

In article <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> I wrote:
:Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is
:currently marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file.
... rationale omitted ...

In article <6075@sigi.Colorado.EDU> swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) writes:
>I don't know how well this would work.  I don't ever unsubscribe to newsgroups.
>I just don't read them.  This is probably true for a lot of people.

>Or maybe I'm a little confused about something.  When I got access my .newsrc
>file had all of the currently available newsgroups already in it.  Is this
>not usually true at most sites?

I think it varies a lot; a news administrator would probably be well off
leaving most newsgroups unsubscribed and handing the novice newsreader
a sheet of paper describing various useful facts.  This sheet should
probably be one or two pages and *very* simple to insure that it gets
read ...

I don't claim that this will work in all sites, or cure all known
crossposting problems; but things can get real bad right now and if
it helps a little, it's better than nothing.
-- 
Richard Welty  518-387-6346  GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York
   welty@ge-crd.ARPA  {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!welty
    ``I'm not making any of this up you know'' -- Anna Russell