david@dhw68k.cts.com (David H. Wolfskill) (03/29/91)
In article <1991Mar29.003409.21974@scd.hp.com> schmitz@scd.hp.com (John Schmitz) writes: >In article <1991Mar28.194737.5337@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >> In many areas of the net, the use of a Distribution header to limit >> distribution of an article in a netwide group simply doesn't work properly >> at all any more. Am I the only one who considers this a serious trend that >> should be averted now? >I agree this is a serious problem and I know that some news systems >completely ignore distributions (no flames about that here, please). I'll freely grant that sites exist that seem to be set up to minimize the usefulness of the Distribution: header. However, this site is not one of them. (Nor am I claiming that anyone thinks it is; this is merely a "constructive proof" that a site can be set up to make use of the header in question.) >But if distributions were only geographic (or bounded) in nature, it >would be easy to stop the propogation of unwanted distributions no >matter how the articles arrived. Now, however, it is impossible to tell >what is and isn't a valid distribution, so you are forced to pass >everything. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something here -- but I happen to find Distribution: a rather useful header to have around -- and use. Indeed, in the "distributions" field of the (C News) sys file entries, I explicitly specify only distributions that I know to be valid. (Thus, for example, I do not include such things as "comp" or "soc" as recognized distributions.) Granted, that means that some articles are not propagated through this site; then again, each of those articles specifies a "Distribution:" header that indicates to me that it is not to be propagated (because none of the distributions specified therein is valid for propagation over any of the links in question). Elaborating a bit: Although this site is in southern California, I prefer to receive the "ba" distribution (and the "ba.*" hierarchy, for that matter -- though they are quite distinct in my mind), largely because I have family in the San Francisco Bay area -- and I visit there with moderate frequency. However, I do not propagate the "ba" distribution to any other site except by explicit request. Thus, in spite of the assertion in <1991Mar29.003409.21974@scd.hp.com>, I do not find myself "forced to pass everything." I confess that I become mildly annoyed, though, when I see a posting about an event in (say) the SF Bay area with a distribuution of "ca" (which is used in this area to refer to California; I understand that there exist contexts in which the same abbreviation is used to refer to Canada) -- rather than a distribution of "ba". After all, in such a case, we are not dealing with a null (or non-existent) Distribution: header -- the header exists, but has a rather inappropriate value. It is thus distinguished from the bulk of the infamous "Car for sale in New Jersey" articles. On the other hand, I'm hardly convinced that the existing implementation(s) regarding Distribution: are completely ideal; in particular, any site that accepts a given distribution from two different sites, when the two sites do not agree on what the distribution in question means, is contributing to the lack of usefulness of the header in question. (I recall having read of a couple of semantically distinct meanings for the distribution "uk", for example.) It is not clear to me what useful action might be taken to deal with this; the best I have been able to figure out is to do with my site what I described above -- make sure I have some understanding of each distinct valid distribution; I am quite willing to drop articles with "invalid" (for this site) distributions on the floor. (I suppose I could be accused of being somewhat of a "techno-bigot" for such an attitude. Oh, well....) -- David H. Wolfskill uucp: ...{spsd,zardoz,felix}!dhw68k!david InterNet: david@dhw68k.cts.com CompuServe: >internet:david@dhw68k.cts.com
peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (03/31/91)
I set up my sys file explicitly backwards: I have .../all,!local,!this,!that
depending on the site I'm talking to. This blocks only postings I know don't
need to go to that site. Typos still make it through. I'd much rather do this
than try to keep track of all the distributions in the world.
--
(peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com)
`-_-'
'U`