Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!welty From: welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Wish List re: Crossposting Message-ID: <10879@steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 17 May 88 23:28:09 GMT References: <439@bacchus.DEC.COM> <52859@sun.uucp> <9879@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6075@sigi.Colorado.EDU> <1107@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <9297@e.ms.uky.edu> Reply-To: welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 48 In some article from now missing from the references: line, 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. In article <9297@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >There's been a number of times when I've been requesting some >information, the answer to which could have been found in any of a >number of groups, some of which I don't read and have no interest in >reading. But I still want this information. What I do is cross-post >to everywhere applicable, point out that I don't read a particular >group, and that responses should be mailed. And you may be unaware of how many news readers dislike this sort of thing. In talking to various heavy readers, I find that such postings are generally among their pet peeves. They aren't quite as annoyed if the poster offers to summarize, though. The fact that I find this annoying is one of the reasons I am careful to subscribe to a group for a week or so before I post to it. >I really think that this debate falls under the same sort of category >as getting rn to be totally quiet about what articles it's killing >as it enters a newsgroup. i.e. an almost religious matter relating >to personal preferences. (:-) to Chuq) Well, I used to write graphical user interfaces at a now-defunct VLSI cad tools firm, and it never ceased to amaze me how having lots of customization features would make customers happy (even if they never actually used them, they liked the fact that they were there.) While news software is not a commercial product, and no one is getting paid much, if anything, to write it, authors of news programs may wish to keep in mind the fact that if it's easy to provide a flag (no matter how silly), it may well be better than making an arbitrary decision. >Seriously, I've never understood why some people are so violently >opposed to cross-posting. Only rarely does it get out of hand, >and it's a useful feature to have. It gets out of hand a *great* deal in some groups I read, and can be quite obnoxious if two groups really go after each other (witness the recent rec.bicycles/rec.autos flame war over right of way and responsible behaviour in traffic) -- 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