[news.misc] A suggestion for cutting down cross-posting

SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA (Lynn Gazis) (03/11/89)

Jon Zeeff writes:

> I think there are good reasons to continue in several groups.

Very often there are not.  For example, several months ago a message was
cross-posted to soc.culture.greek, talk.politics.mideast, and soc.culture.china
with certain comments about Greeks and Muslims and a couple of lines about
Malaysia.  The discussion continued in several newsgroups, about three more
were added, and much bandwidth was wasted discussing, for example, Arab
politics in soc.culture.china and soc.culture.greek, where such discussion
doesn't belong.  Another example: someone posted a request to maybe half
a dozen newsgroups asking for information about religious holidays.  Replies
were cross-posted to all the original groups.  Now I find information about
Hindu and Muslim religious holidays interesting, but I don't really think
it belongs on soc.culture.greek.  I see a lot of such inappropriate
cross-postings, and, while I don't want to rule out the possibility
of carrying on a discussion in two groups, I would prefer asking people
if they really want to continue cross-posting to six groups to the 
counter-proposal:

> Make the newsreader strongly discourage changing Subject:, Followup-To:,
> or Newsgroups: lines.  If a discussion starts somewhere it should
> probably remain there.

Lynn Gazis-Sax
sappho@sri-nic.arpa