chuqui@nsc.UUCP (01/25/84)
I've seen a trend on this topic (and the net in general) that bothers me,
and I thought it was time to do a little friendly reminding about it. More
and more people are posting articles to multiple topics, and it seems that
a lot of the time these multiple postings don't serve any useful purpose
except to clutter things up. I don't know if it is because people aren't
sure where to post things (perhaps because there are too many topics?
Nooooooooo....) or whether they are simply too lazy to think about where
things belong. To help you out, here are some simple suggestions about what
to do and what not to do when posting to groups:
1> Think!
Yes, Thomas Watson said it best. Before you blindly pour your message
into every possible topic, think about the audience you are trying to
reach. Think about which topics are best to get to that audience
without making them think you are hassling them or bothering people
that aren't part of that audience. Assume that a person will see a
message in EVERY topic you post it to (I know that newer software will
not show a message after it has already been shown elsewhere, but many
sites don't have that, and if you are constantly popping in and out of
news (like many people) it doesn't help). About the third time I see a
message, I start getting irritated, and I know I'm not alone.
2> No more than two groups!
Except in very specific cases, you can get to your audience with no
more than two groups on the net. Usually, if you think about it, one
will do. I have seen a growing number of messages with three, four, and
even five topics on it. Thats overkill. Remember, every followup to
your message also goes in those three, four, or five groups. Thats a
lot of inodes (and irritation).
3> Watch for overlapping groups!
There are certain group combinations that are simply silly. One that I
see every so often is the net.unix<->net.unix-wizards combination. If a
topic is appropriate for Wizards, it is too technical for Unix, and
vice versa. Besides, most people read both anyway.
What brought this comment on was the number of messages in net.misc
that are cross referenced to other topics. Net.misc is for discussions
that don't belong anywhere else, so if you are posting to net.misc AND
some other topic, it doesn't belong in net.misc! The same usually holds
true for net.flame.
The other area that people overlap on is sub groups. Currently there
are 10 messages in net.sport on this machine. 8 of them are also linked
into one either net.sport.football or net.sport.hoops. Now, if I wanted
to see what was in net.sport.{football,hoops} I would subscribe to
those topics. The same happens to a lesser extent in net.micro. Leave
the general groups for those that don't have their own topics (I mean,
how can I talk about cricket with all this football going on?)
I did a little spot checking in my spool file, and I found that between
30-50% of these topics are linked into multiple areas: net.misc,
net.general, net.wanted, and net.flame. Thats a large percentage, folks. (I
only checked about 8 of the most likely topics as well.) Looking through,
here are the more outrageous cross linkings I found:
net.unix and net.unix-wizards
net.misc and anything
net.all and net.all.all
net.flame and anything
net.general and net.followup (yes, somebody actually did this!)
net.wanted and net.general (It is extremely silly to put wanted items
in anything BUT wanted, since it doesn't help and it just irritates
people. I'm much more likely to NOT answer a question if it is
posted everywhere than if its just in net.wanted)
I think its time to be a little more careful with your postings. The net is
already starting to creak at the edges, and at the speed its growing, one
of these days its going to coredump. If we start thinking of how we use the
net, maybe we can keep this from happening.
--
From the house at Pooh Corner: Chuq (a Silly Old Bear)
{fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuqui
have you hugged your Pooh today?
Nuke the '58! Nuke the '58!
The difficult we gave up on yesterday, the impossible we are giving up on now.guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/26/84)
One cause for articles appearing multiple times, even if the article was
originally posted only once but to multiple newsgroups, is that article
passing through a version of news software which doesn't understand
posting to multiple newsgroups. Those versions of news - A news, older
versions of B news (pre-2.9), and possible the "notesfiles" system as
well - will treat an article posted to N newsgroups as N identical articles
posted to each of the N newsgroups. If Usenet sites were all running news 2.10
or later, an article posted to multiple newsgroups would only appear once
and would only be stored in one file. (Furthermore, the "References" line
would be available for all followup articles; some news systems delete this
line on incoming articles.)
Guy Harris
{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guyfair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (02/17/84)
The translation of Guy Harris's article is simple: If you haven't already,
CONVERT your system to 2.10 or later versions of netnews! (please?)
Erik E. Fair
dual!fair@BERKELEY.ARPA
{ucbvax,ihnp4,cbosgd,amd70,zehntel,fortune,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California