[net.news.b] default Distribution: problem

gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/25/84)

This default Distribution: business sure looks like a bug to me.
It seems to me that a site that receives "net.sources" is
receiving "net", just as a site that receives "net,!net.all" is
receiving "net".  Neither one is receiving all of "net", but that's
not the question we wanted answered -- the question is, are they
likely to be interested in a message distributed to the whole "net"
(or "usa" or "uk" or whatever) and in the newsgroup "net.sources",
and the answer is clearly yes.

I don't think that the default article template should include a
specific "Distribution:" line -- a blank one, maybe -- but even if
the user says "Distribution: net", we can do "the right thing"
by fixing it on the "Do I send this msg to this site?" end.

Let's not default any badly-understood features to "on" in the next
netnews release...