xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (11/12/90)
Would someone please take the jerk who posted an inflamatory article on software piracy to six big groups, without putting in a followup line, out back and shoot him? We just went through this same pointless drivel in mid-summer, and as soon as a new bunch of gullible school kids get on the net, this bozo has to set off another wide bandwidth, zero value posting war. The guppies who suckered into following this up, _please_ correct your "Newsgroups: " lines to contain _only_ misc.legal in all successive postings. It may save your accounts. It will certainly do wonders for my nerves. Why the news posting software writers haven't corrected the obvious flaw of allowing cross-posted articles without followup-to entries, after so many ample demonstrations of the complete necessity of such a fix, is beyond me. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) (11/13/90)
>Why the news posting software writers haven't corrected the obvious flaw >of allowing cross-posted articles without followup-to entries, after so >many ample demonstrations of the complete necessity of such a fix, is >beyond me. Why do you think this is a good idea? The problem is that the groups an article is posted to are sometimes inappropriate. Followups are not the problem (or the solution). -- Jon Zeeff (NIC handle JZ) zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us
elw@netx.com (Edwin Wiles) (11/17/90)
In some article that someone posted and Jon didn't attribute: >Why the news posting software writers haven't corrected the obvious flaw >of allowing cross-posted articles without followup-to entries, after so >many ample demonstrations of the complete necessity of such a fix, is >beyond me. In article <DMK_NX@b-tech.uucp> zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) writes: >Why do you think this is a good idea? >The problem is that the groups an article is posted to are sometimes >inappropriate. Followups are not the problem (or the solution). Requiring a followup-to entry would move all the complaints about a poorly cross-posted message to ONE group, therefore cutting down on the total annoyance factor that the original poorly cross-posted message would otherwise generate as all the poorly cross-posted responses complaining about it showed up in all the original groups. IMHO, this would be an EXCELENT idea. Yes, you still get the original irritation of the poorly crosposted message, but for all but one of the news groups, that's the END of the matter. This is a VAST improvment over the current situation. DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS CROSSPOSTING LIMITATION METHODS FOLLOWS: Yes, it would be nice to have some way of telling when a set of newsgroups cross-posted to are inapropriate, but this would either require 'cross-post allowed' information for all newsgroups, thus limiting all attempts at cross- posting regardless of the actual appropriateness of the message to the desired groups. Or it would require some sort of moderator to examine the cross-posted messages for appropriatness before releasing them to the network as a whole. Requiring a "followup-to" field when more than one newsgroup is selected for posting is a relatively easy and simple task that can be implemented across the network as the authors of the various newsreading programs have time. In the case of those who use "Pnews" and "Pnews.headers", it could be implemented at will by simply modifying those two scripts. The 'cross-posting allowed' option is also implementable in software, but has the great drawback of requiring an additional step in the creation of a newsgroup. To wit, what newsgroups now existing will you allow cross-posting to, and how do the current readers of those newsgroup feel about it? It also has the interesting question of how many cross-posting links you allow the cross-posting checker to step through. One? Two? All? Additionally, how do you distribute the information regarding cross-posting links? In the "newgroup" control message? Example: This newsgroup: Allows cross-posting to these: comp.foobar.tech comp.foobar.misc comp.foobar.misc comp.misc comp.misc comp.* # comp.misc cross-posts to any comp group. If you allow one hop, then comp.foobar.tech can certainly cross-post to comp.foobar.misc, and vice-versa. But what happens when the user asks for a cross-post to the following: comp.foobar.tech, comp.foobar.misc, comp.misc, and comp.sys.ibm.pc? How about just: comp.foobar.tech, comp.foobar.misc, and comp.misc? The 'cross-posting moderated' option is flatly impossible. We have enough trouble as it is in finding moderators to handle the normal moderation tasks. Asking someone to take this position is asking for network wide censorship of cross-posted messages; not exactly a wonderful idea. Hopefully this will spawn some useful discussion... Enjoy! -- Prefered.: elw@netx.com Edwin Wiles Alternate: ...!grebyn!netex!elw NetExpress Inc., Suite 300, Who? Me?!? Responsible!?! Surely You Jest! Vienna, VA, USA 22182