Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!brazos.rice.edu!bbc From: bbc@legia.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: sci.aquaria.birdfeed (was: Guppies) Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 90 00:46:37 GMT References: <##701$@rpi.edu> <10804@saturn.ADS.COM> <1990Feb12.091942.9791@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990Feb13.044748.15122@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <3485@oolong.la.locus.com> Sender: root@rice.edu Reply-To: Benjamin Chase Followup-To: alt.flame Distribution: usa Organization: Center for Research on Parallel Computations Lines: 52 In-reply-to: oleg@electra.la.locus.com's message of 17 Feb 90 03:07:06 GMT oleg@electra.la.locus.com (Oleg Kiselev) writes: >Newsgroups: news.groups,sci.aquaria [Oleg, did _you_ add sci.aquaria to the Newsgroups line, or did someone else do it for you? I thought I'd set follow-ups to news.groups, and hope you didn't intentionally perpetuate this spew on sci.aquaria, of all places.] >>a) Are *.aquaria cross-postings really _necessary_? I say no. >You are wrong. How, Oleg, can one be "wrong" about their own opinions? Opinions are opinions. But why do you state your opinion as fact? >The groups propagations are not identical and there are >large gaps of discontinuity in ALL of the aquaria groups that make >cross-posting necessary. Once again, that word, "necessary". Necessary? Necessary to satisfy the ego of the poster, IMO. Where is Eugene Miya when you need him? >REC.aquaria doesn't [have good propagation] and I have no idea why... Let's blame Peter for that. It's the easiest choice, and a reasonable assignment of the blame, IMO. > The safest thing to do is x-post to all of them. Safest? As if it would be "unsafe" if your article failed to reach someone? > It costs the same to transmit as an article posted to one group only > and is much more likely to deliver the article to the readers. As Richard Link has pointed out, there are unforeseen costs in cross-posting. >>c) "[Posting to just one *.aquaria group] results in the article's not >>getting everywhere that it should." But to where _should_ an article >>get? Everywhere? Why? Because the author needs the extra audience, >>and hence attention? Because they want it to? >Because I am not happy about replying to a followup of an article I had >never seen. People ask questions and expect answers. If I do not see the >question, how can I answer it?! There's always the option of not replying. Perhaps someone else will answer it. -- Ben Chase , Rice University, Houston, Texas