Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!maart
From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Questions re "Expires:" and cross-posting
Message-ID: <4882@koto.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 19 Dec 89 19:14:07 GMT
References: <8549@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <234@teslab.lab.OZ>
Organization: VU Informatika, Amsterdam
Lines: 36

In article <234@teslab.lab.OZ> charles@teslab.lab.OZ (Charles W. Widepy) writes:
\There was an article <3505@solo10.cs.vu.nl> received here recently
\that had an expiry date of the end of 1992.  It was over 32K in
\length, cross-posted to 4 groups (comp.editors, comp.unix.questions,
\comp.text, comp.misc)

The article was posted by me (the Vi Reference).  I have used the `Expires:'
header option because the same questions tend to get asked over and over;
if people would start reading comp.editors, the very first article they'd
find would be the Reference.  I have kept the `Message-ID' to be able to use
the `Supersedes' option when a new version will be ready.  I have cross-posted
to other groups of interest because on many sites comp.editors seems not to be
available.

\but there were multiple copies rather than one
\copy with multiple links - meaning it would take up about 400
\kilobyte-years on the disk (and we didn't even want it). I have two
\questions:
\
\* Why are there multiple copies of a cross-posted article (all other
\cross-posted articles I have seen here are linked)?

It seems your news software must be fixed: at our site there are 4 links to
the same file.

\* Is it possible to prevent the use of the "Expires:" postnews
\option?

That would be a disservice to the net: normally one uses this header item to
SHORTEN an article's lifetime, because of its topical contents.  Often the
`Expires:' line is simply ignored by the `expire' program.
I used the `Expires:' option to LENGHTEN the lifetime, because some other
more appropriate option seems not to be available (hint).
-- 
  Sci.aquaria votes are only poisson distributed in France.  (Alan M Stanier) |
 Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam:  maart@cs.vu.nl,  uunet!mcsun!botter!maart