pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) (08/30/88)
I just did some find/sed/grep hacking to find out just how prevalent
cross-posting is. I found:
38149 total different articles
34354 in 1 newsgroup
2944 in 2 newsgroups
669 in 3 newsgroups
134 in 4 newsgroups
30 in 5 newsgroups
10 in 6 newsgroups
1 in 7 newsgroups
1 in 8 newsgroups
1 in 9 newsgroups
2 in 10 newsgroups
2 in 11 newsgroups
1 in 12 newsgroups
We keep news for only three weeks here, so your mileage may vary.
Here are the people who cross-posted to five groups:
Alan Wexelblat, Joe Buck, Valerie Maslak, Acharekar, Acharekar,
Jennifer Greenleaf, Wilson Heydt, Wilson Heydt, Marcia Dickerson,
Gerald Hawkins, Usenet Administration at lamc, Barnacle Wes, Alan Bostick,
Alan Bostick, Douglas Landau, Richard Champeaux, Scott Horne, L.Perkins,
Gary S. Trujillo, Robert Wilhite, Mark Collien, sam r. thangiah,
Anthony Yu, Steve Fintel, Toshikazu Kato, Toshikazu Kato, Terrance Curry,
Earl H. Kinmonth, Steven Esterly, Brian Evans, Lee McLoughlin,
Edward C. Kwok, Cybele Abbett, Sri Rajeev, Herman Rubin, Jim Meritt
Here are the people who cross-posted to six groups:
L. C. Dombrowski, Steven Lee, Nur Mohamed H, miss f.deravi, Scott Horne,
Scott Horne, xxxx, Jan Morales, Jan Morales, Torkil Hammer, Thomas Cervera
Here are the relevant headers from the two articles cross-posted to
seven groups:
From: cem@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Malloy)
Newsgroups: misc.forsale,misc.wanted,ih.wanted,chi.wanted,att.wanted,comp.sys.ibm.pc,att.sys.pc6300
Subject: Ventura Publisher For Sale
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
From: xray@lamc.UUCP (xray)
Newsgroups: misc.test,alt.test,biz.test,bionet.general,ca.test,ba.test,lamc.test
Subject: test config
Organization: Letterman Army Medical Center - San Francisco, CA
Here are the headers from the article cross-posted to eight groups:
From: jennifer@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Jennifer Schlickbernd)
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc,rec.games.chess,rec.games.bridge,rec.games.video,comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.atari.8bit,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac
Subject: NEW NEWSGROUP PROPOSED: rec.games.pc
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
And here are the headers from the article cross-posted to nine groups:
From: larryg@zehntel (Larry Gillespie)
Newsgroups: ba.market,ba.general,ca.wanted,ca.general,misc.consumers,misc.wanted,misc.misc,rec.music.classical,rec.music.misc
Subject: Need good Violincello appraiser.
Organization: Zehntel, Inc. Walnut Creek, CA
Now it starts getting fun. Here are the headers from the two articles
cross-posted to ten groups:
From: gould@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk (Adrian John Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.prolog,comp.lang.ada,eunet.general,misc.misc,eunet.esprit
Subject: transputers, and info on languages
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Reading Univ., UK.
From: gould@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk (Adrian John Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.prolog,comp.lang.c++,comp.arch,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.ada,eunet.general,eunet.esprit,misc.misc
Subject: Re: transputer, etc.
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Reading Univ., UK.
Notice how he throws in misc.misc and eunet.general just for kicks.
Now we're up to eleven groups:
From: edw@zehntel (Ed Wright)
Newsgroups: misc.wanted,rec.misc,soc.men,soc.women,rec.humor.d,talk.religion.misc,comp.women,misc.misc,ca.general,ba.general,ca.wanted
Subject: Calendar, Holidays, Sig Events NEEDED Help PLease
Organization: Zehn and The Art of ATE.
From: kmw@ardent.UUCP (Ken Wallich)
Newsgroups: misc.wanted,rec.misc,soc.men,soc.women,rec.humor.d,talk.religion.misc,comp.women,misc.misc,ca.general,ba.general,ca.wanted
Subject: Re: Calendar, Holidays, Sig Events NEEDED Help PLease
Organization: Ardent Computer
There's misc.misc again. Also three other random misc groups. And
rec.humor.d? Hmmm. This pair is actually fairly amusing. The posting
from Ed starts out with a core dump from rn, then says:
********************************************************************
* I Just know some one is going to need to flame me for spelling *
* or posting to the wrong group , for using CAPs, or just on GPs. *
* PLEASE EDIT THE NEWSGROUP LINE BEFORE YOU FLAME. *
* Better Yet, E-mail the flame and Save Net Bandwidth *
********************************************************************
So what does Ken do? Flames him without editing the newsgroup line,
of course. Good going.
And now, the winner, with twelve newsgroups:
From: ssa@mrsvr.UUCP (xxxx)
Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.databases,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.misc,comp.sources.d,comp.std.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.misc,comp.unix.questions,misc.wanted,comp.lang.scheme.c
Subject: !!! WANTED ALIVE !!! source for simple editor
Organization: GE Medical, MR Center, Milwaukee
This guy's real name appears in the body of the article as "S. Alavi".
Lastly, here are the repeat offenders -- the people who cross-posted to
five or more groups more than once:
3 Scott Horne
2 xxxx (S. Alavi)
2 Wilson Heydt
2 Toshikazu Kato
2 Jan Morales
2 Alan Bostick
2 Adrian John Gould
2 Acharekar
Oh yeah, one more thing -- the top 20 newsgroups for cross-posting:
comp.sys.ibm.pc
misc.consumers
rec.autos
comp.unix.questions
soc.women
misc.wanted
misc.kids
soc.singles
misc.headlines
comp.sources.wanted
comp.lang.c
comp.unix.xenix
misc.forsale
rec.music.misc
talk.politics.misc
comp.unix.microport
comp.unix.wizards
news.groups
rec.arts.movies
comp.misc
Cheers!
---
Jef
Jef Poskanzer jef@rtsg.ee.lbl.gov ...well!pokey
"It looks like comedy, it sounds like comedy, but it's just not that funny."john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) (08/30/88)
In article <6966@well.UUCP>, pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) writes: > And now, the winner, with twelve newsgroups: > Newsgroups: comp.editors,comp.databases,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.misc,comp.sources.d,comp.std.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.misc,comp.unix.questions,misc.wanted,comp.lang.scheme.c > Subject: !!! WANTED ALIVE !!! source for simple editor And best of all, out of all the twelve newsgroups, he didn't even include the correct one for his request: comp.sources.wanted! Actually, this is a surprisingly low number of cross-posts beyond six groups.... -- John Owens john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US uunet!jetson!john +1 301 249 6000 john%jetson.uucp@uunet.uu.net
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (08/31/88)
The cross-posting to 2 groups number is much less than 10% ... big deal.
I forget what 3 group cross-postings was, but I'd 'expect' it was around
1000 ... again, big deal.
That is, I take these numbers as 'proof' that cross-posting isn't a problem.
It may also be significant that I recognized few of those names. Most of
them from my days when I was young and foolish (last spring) and I actually
read soc.singles (along with comp.sys.amiga -- they're both in the top 5
in volume -- young and foolish I said). It makes me wonder which sorts
of groups tend towards cross-posting ... (I read mainly technical groups).
--
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- Problem: how to get people to call ...; Solution: Completely reconfigure
<---- your mail system then leave for a weeks vacation when 90% done.rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) (09/01/88)
In article <129@jetson.UPMA.MD.US> john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) writes: >In article <6966@well.UUCP>, pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) writes: >> And now, the winner, with twelve newsgroups: >And best of all, out of all the twelve newsgroups, he didn't even >include the correct one for his request: comp.sources.wanted! I stumbled on the fix for excessive cross posting. I built news on a 286 and after a few fixes to get news working, I'm up and running. A few weeks later I notice a few 0 length articles. Then a few more. I figure its a bug, but low priority to fix since there are so few of them comming in like that. Turns out, its A FEATURE (in my mind). Those 0 length articles are all excessively cross posted articles! Intel somehow implemented the RRM (Read Readers Mind) instruction on the 286, and conveniently dumps those articles in the bit bucket without me having to do a thing. They took RRM out of the 386; Motorola never had it. And everybody thinks the 286 is an architectural disaster. Hah! :-) -- Rick Richardson, PC Research, Inc. (201) 542-3734 (voice, nights) OR (201) 389-8963 (voice, days) uunet!pcrat!rick (UUCP) rick%pcrat.uucp@uunet.uu.net (INTERNET)