mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM (Miriam Nadel) (05/10/88)
We periodically see suggestions about how to cut down on cross-posting and
the most workable thing I've noticed so far is the suggestion that the
news software should require you to confirm that you really want to crosspost
the article in question to all the groups mentioned. That may cut down on
careless crossposting (which very likely is the major problem) but I'd like
to suggest that there should be some filters which would outright prevent
crossposting between certain groups. For example,
xxx.anything and xxx.misc - the .misc groups are supposed to exist to
handle things that don't belong anywhere else.
There may be appropriate occassions for
crossposting between xxx.something and yyy.misc,
however.
misc.misc and anything else - by definition of misc.misc
talk.politics.mideast and soc.culture.jewish or soc.culture.arabic - since
t.p.m was created to get these discussions out
of the soc groups
misc.headlines and talk.politics.misc - keep a given discussion in one. This
is a problem largely because few people have
any idea of what misc.headlines is for.
alt groups and anything else - particularly alt.sex since it was created
as an alt group to appease management types
and everyone in soc.singles is sick and tired
of the "music to fuck to" question anyway
talk.bizarre and rec.arts.startrek - for obvious reasons
I'm sure any regular newsreader can come up with several more examples.
There are getting to be so many groups that I'm sure new readers (and some
old ones!) are just confused, but having given up hope of people learning
better, it would be nice to impose my will on them :-)
Miriam Nadel
--
"There was a man who, upon finding nothing to complain about in his coal,
complained that it contained too many prehistoric toads." -Mark Twain
ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax!gryphon!mhnadel rutgers!marque!gryphon!mhnadel
codas!ddsw1!gryphon!mhnadelreid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) (05/12/88)
I think that if you took a poll of the rank and file of the network, you would find most people in support of a rule that talk.bizarre should not be allowed to crosspost to ANYTHING. In general crossposting is a bad idea. Crossposting from talk.bizarre is an especially bad idea.
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/12/88)
>I think that if you took a poll of the rank and file of the network, you >would find most people in support of a rule that talk.bizarre should not be >allowed to crosspost to ANYTHING. In general crossposting is a bad idea. >Crossposting from talk.bizarre is an especially bad idea. Crossposting is not, in general, a Bad Thing. But unrestricted cross-posting creates sloppy group lists and encourages abuses. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, though, let's try to make cross-posting better. A couple of suggestions: o restrict cross-posting across top-level domains. How often do you REALLY need to post to both misc.misc and comp.sys.misc? Almost invariably, cross-postings should stay in the same part of the name space, such as "rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.mag.otherrealms". o Restrict cross-posting up the name-space. For instance, there's no good reason to post to both comp.sys.mac AND comp.sys.mac.programmer. If it belongs in one, there's no reason to post it to the other, since one is a specific subset of information to the other. How hard you define this restriction is up for discussion. Would rec.arts.books and rec.arts.sf-lovers be restricted? comp.sys.amiga and comp.sys.mac? o Force a followup-to on cross postings. I've suggested this on and off for a few years. If you post a message with cross-postings, the posting program (postnews and/or Pnews and/or whatever) should generate a Followup-To: line sending followups only to the first group in the Newsgroups: line. This allows you to send out a widely disbursed message to get a discussion going, but return the discussion to the primary newsgroup rather than spreading it hither and yon. It could be overridden by a knowledgable person who felt it necessary, but in theory someone who knows enough to change a Followup-To: line wouldn't do it spuriously. Comments? Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we read his words and speak his name. Rest in Peace.
davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) (05/12/88)
Remember way back when in article <3938@gryphon.CTS.COM> when mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM (Miriam Nadel) said...
-We periodically see suggestions about how to cut down on cross-posting and
-the most workable thing I've noticed so far is the suggestion that the
-news software should require you to confirm that you really want to crosspost
-the article in question to all the groups mentioned. That may cut down on
-careless crossposting (which very likely is the major problem) but I'd like
-to suggest that there should be some filters which would outright prevent
-crossposting between certain groups. For example,
-
[ some stuff removed ]
-talk.bizarre and rec.arts.startrek - for obvious reasons
-
Actually, generally anything cross-posted between talk.bizarre and any
other newsgroup, is cross-posted to at least one wrong newsgroup.
And generally, talk.bizarre and rec.humor mix the worst. Talk.bizarre
and alt.flame is the only combination that ever (sometimes) makes
sense.
-Miriam Nadel
---
-"There was a man who, upon finding nothing to complain about in his coal,
-complained that it contained too many prehistoric toads." -Mark Twain
-ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax!gryphon!mhnadel rutgers!marque!gryphon!mhnadel
- codas!ddsw1!gryphon!mhnadel
"Here at talk.bizarre, we believe the letter V should stand for quality...not
Volume."
--
DavidBedno(akaTheCatintheHat,Dr.Seuss,Dr.Dave,Bamf)Nowappearingat:
davidbe@sco.COM-OR-...!{uunet,ihnp4,decvax!microsoft,ucbvax!ucscc}
!sco!davidbe-OR-610PacificAve#5,Santa Cruz,California95060Home:
408-425-5266Work:408-425-7222x697(I'mprobablyhere...)/*NotSCO'sopinions*/gz@spt.entity.com (Gail Zacharias) (05/12/88)
In article <52859@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >o Restrict cross-posting up the name-space. For instance, there's no good > reason to post to both comp.sys.mac AND comp.sys.mac.programmer. Sure there is: trying to move a discussion from one group to the other. -- gz@entity.com ...!mit-eddie!spt!gz Now let's all repeat the non-conformist oath.
desj@brahms.berkeley.edu (David desJardins) (05/12/88)
In article <52859@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) suggests
that when a message is crossposted, the posting program should
automatically generate a Followup-To: line directing followups only to
the first group in the Newsgroups: line.
Unfortunately, this proposal would require changing the installed
news software at each and every network site. And everyone knows that
this simply isn't going to happen. So I think that, if we really want
to have an effect, that we consider a modification of Chuq's proposal.
What I suggest is that sites which receive crossposted articles with
blank or missing Followup-To: lines could automatically modify those
articles to include Followup-To: lines to the first group in the
Newsgroups: line. This would have the same effect as Chuq's proposal,
not only at the site with the modification but at every downstream site.
Obviously, users at either end could override this; the poster by
including an explicit Followup-To: line, and the recipient by modifying
the Newsgroups: line of his followup.
If this filter were installed at only the backbone sites, and
gradually propagated to others as they updated their news software, then
it seems that it would take effect over a large fraction of the net
almost immediately. It could be distributed as a patch to the news
software.
The more that I think about this, the better it sounds. I'd like to
hear some serious discussion of any disadvantages people see to this
approach, and whether it should be pursued. (I'm crossposting to
news.software.b so that the people who might actually put something like
this into the software will see the proposal, but the discussion should
remain in news.misc, I think.)
-- David desJardinschuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/12/88)
>that when a message is crossposted, the posting program should >automatically generate a Followup-To: line directing followups only to >the first group in the Newsgroups: line. > Unfortunately, this proposal would require changing the installed >news software at each and every network site. And everyone knows that >this simply isn't going to happen. It will, over time. If the changes were made in either an official patch or the next release, they'd propogate to a large percentage of the net in a reasonable period of time. I don't particularly consider this a life-or-death situation, just a way to improve things over time. If you want it to happen NOW, you could patch inews to add the appropriate restrictions to any article that was missing them. Or you could even, if you want to get silly, put the code in sendbatch and update articles as they get sent to your downstream sites (which would tie in with the priority batching proposal I made). I, personally, prefer to keep downstream sites from making changes to a given message without a very good reason. Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we read his words and speak his name. Rest in Peace.
ben@idsnh.UUCP (Ben Smith) (05/13/88)
In article <52859@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >o restrict cross-posting across top-level domains. I often find that cross posting across top-level domains is all that I need. For example, an article about compiling nethack on xenix would be posted to comp.unix.xenix rec.games.hack. You don't mean to prevent this, do you? >o Restrict cross-posting up the name-space. On this, I agree. >o Force a followup-to on cross postings. ... > ... line sending followups only to the first > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > group in the Newsgroups: line This is excellent. -ben
shefter-bret@CS.YALE.EDU (Bret A. Shefter) (05/14/88)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MEmunch, munch, smack gulp <burp> In article <439@bacchus.DEC.COM> reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid) writes: >I think that if you took a poll of the rank and file of the network, you >would find most people in support of a rule that talk.bizarre should not be >allowed to crosspost to ANYTHING. In general crossposting is a bad idea. 1) As almost anyone in talk.bizarre will no doubt verify, most cross- posting "from" t.b actually originates outside the group (the recent startrek unpleasantness is but one example). People who think, "Well, this ought to appeal to anyone with a weird sense of humour" or "Gee, maybe this is just strange enough that one of *them* will know/want to know about it" just sort of tack on the extra group without really thinking. >Crossposting from talk.bizarre is an especially bad idea. 2) The most common cross-post from talk.bizarre is to alt.flame, which in my opinion is perfectly permissible. Alt.flame is a forum for people to vent their spleens in a soft, padded environment. If someone's flaming in talk. bizarre, or anywhere else for that matter, they will often cross-post to alt. flame. This is acceptable as long as they *direct*follow-ups*. If it's going to be a flame war, leave it there. If it's going to be strange and funny, leave it in talk.bizarre. If it's a serious followup, the person doing the following up can change the newsgroups line (it's not that hard, guys! Really!). Shadow -- From the only slightly twisted mind of... shefter-bret@yale.ARPA * DISCLAIMER * shefter@yalecs.BITNET It's not my fault! ...!ihnp4!hsi!yale!shefter ...!decvax!yale!shefter "Elementary, my dear Riker...sir."
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (05/14/88)
Several people have talked about various proposed solutions to
the crossposting problem. Here is a simple one that occured
to me last night ...
Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is
currently marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file.
It seems to me that the bulk of the bandwidth-wasting flame
wars between various groups start because some moron crossposted
to a bunch of groups said moron didn't read, because the moron
thought the group name seemed appropriate. I make it a point
to never post to a group unless I've been reading it for long
enough to catch the general trends, but many don't.
Comments?
--
Richard Welty 518-387-6346
welty@ge-crd.ARPA {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!weltyv
``I drink warm beer, and I don't even own a Lucas refrigerator''matt@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (Stop calling me Fred) (05/14/88)
In article <554@viscous> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes:
) Actually, generally anything cross-posted between talk.bizarre and any
) other newsgroup, is cross-posted to at least one wrong newsgroup.
I said precisely this several months ago. I got flamed for it. By
talk.bizarre posters. Some of the same ones who cross-post OUT of
t.b into groups they do not read.
Matthaugj@pigs.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) (05/14/88)
In article <439@bacchus.DEC.COM>, reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes: > I think that if you took a poll of the rank and file of the network, you > would find most people in support of a rule that talk.bizarre should not be > allowed to crosspost to ANYTHING. In general crossposting is a bad idea. > Crossposting from talk.bizarre is an especially bad idea. i don't know what the actual propagation for talk.bizarre is, but then i don't have any of the talk groups. i like it that way, keeps dR. bOb TeCh out of my disk drive. - john. -- The Beach Bum Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers UUCP: ...!killer!rpp386!jfh jfh@rpp386.uucp :DOMAIN "You are in a twisty little maze of UUCP connections, all alike" -- fortune
msb@sq.uucp (Mark Brader) (05/14/88)
Chuq von Rospach (chuq@plaid.Sun.COM) suggests: > o restrict cross-posting across top-level domains. How often do you REALLY > need to post to both misc.misc and comp.sys.misc? This has come up before; the restriction is a bad idea. First of all, it is quite common to want to post to a local interest group and a netwide group, or to two local-area groups of different localness. Combinations like tor.news,ont.uucp are fairly often seen around here. Once when this came up before, the restriction was actually implemented on some sites (due to a misunderstanding, I think), and announced in ont.general or some such group. As this had not been discussed, I raised the point in news.misc, and because of the restriction I had to make it a separate article from my followup in ont.general. Besides, there really are topics of discourse that cut across top-level-grouping lines. > o Force a followup-to on cross postings. ... This is a good idea. > The posting program (postnews and/or Pnews and/or whatever) should > generate a Followup-To: line sending followups only to the first > group in the Newsgroups: line. This is a very bad idea. The same applies to David desJardins (desj@brahms.Berkeley.EDU)'s variation: ] ... that sites which receive crossposted articles with ] blank or missing Followup-To: lines could automatically modify those ] articles to include Followup-To: lines to the first group in the ] Newsgroups: line. Chuq seems not to believe that cross-postings have a legitimate use other than attracting wider notice to the start of a discussion. In fact, this is probably their worst use. If I wanted to read about the physics of playing chess, I'd be reading sci.physics in the first place, so there'd be no need to put the first article on the topic in rec.games.chess as well as there. Conversely, if I DON'T want to read a lot of articles on physics, I won't be a subscriber to sci.physics, and I will want to see the articles on physics of chess in rec.games.chess. The most beneficial use of cross-posting occurs when a topic really does fit in more than one newsgroup; this happens frequently. (If it is happening ALL the time, as sometimes seems to me to be the case in soc.*, this is a sign that there are too many newsgroups and reorganization is needed.) The "first newsgroup" concept is wrong; the present default is right. However, it probably should not be the default. Probably there should be *no* default; if you specify a cross-posting, you should have to specify something for followups, and that would be it. I would add that ANY act of following-up to either a cross-posted article or an article with a followup-to line should cause the poster to be reminded explicitly of what is going on -- AFTER composing the followup article. Mark Brader "I'm not going to post a revision: even USENET utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com readers can divide by 100." -- Brian Reid
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (05/14/88)
I could live with any cross-posting restrictions you want to put
into the software SO LONG AS it's not a strict restriction. That is,
postnews/Pnews merely create a header which matches up with the
restrictions then inews pays no more attention to things than it
does now.
This way the idle cross-posters will be nudged to think about their
cross-posting, but when the need arises to do a strange cross-posting
the capability still exists.
Chuq, for every objection you raised I was able to think of a
counter example where it was perfectly reasonable to do a posting
like you described. Each of my counter examples were rare-ish
situations but still reasonable.
I mostly agree with you ...
--
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- Goodbye RAH.richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (05/14/88)
In article <20@idsnh.UUCP> ben@.UUCP (Ben Smith) writes: >In article <52859@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >>o Force a followup-to on cross postings. ... >> ... line sending followups only to the first >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> group in the Newsgroups: line > >This is excellent. Excuse me, I missed the part where it was shown that the first group was decided to be the most appropriate. But rejecting a crossposted article that doesnt have the followup-to field set is an appealing idea though. -- noalias went. it really wasn't negotiable richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) (05/15/88)
In article <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) writes:
:Several people have talked about various proposed solutions to
:the crossposting problem. Here is a simple one that occured
:to me last night ...
:
:Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is
:currently marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file.
:It seems to me that the bulk of the bandwidth-wasting flame
:wars between various groups start because some moron crossposted
:to a bunch of groups said moron didn't read, because the moron
:thought the group name seemed appropriate. I make it a point
:to never post to a group unless I've been reading it for long
:enough to catch the general trends, but many don't.
I don't know how well this would work. I don't ever unsubscribe to newsgroups.
I just don't read them. This is probably true for a lot of people.
Or maybe I'm a little confused about something. When I got access my .newsrc
file had all of the currently available newsgroups already in it. Is this
not usually true at most sites?
Frank Swarbrick (and his cat) swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU
...!{ncar|nbires}!boulder!tramp!swarbric
"We've seen each other's hands. What else is there?"mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) (05/16/88)
In article <3938@gryphon.CTS.COM>, mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM (Miriam Nadel) writes: > [stuff about crossposting] I'd like to suggest that there should be > some filters which would outright prevent crossposting between > certain groups. For example, Remember to allow for moving a discussion. My usual method for moving a discussion is to cross-post to both the old and the new groups, with a Followup-To to the new group, and say in the message that I'm moving it and why. This can produce crosspostings between almost any two groups - for example, I recently crossposted a message to comp.lang.c and sci.lang for this reason. der Mouse uucp: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) (05/16/88)
In article <6075@sigi.Colorado.EDU>, swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) writes: > In article <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) writes: [proposed crossposting rule] >> Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is currently >> marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file. I don't *have* a .newsrc - I use my own newsreader, and it keeps its "messages read" information in an utterly incompatible format, so I used another name (.readrc) for it. Does this mean I'm not allowed to crosspost? If so, you can bet that'll be the second thing I'll fix when we get the new version. (First thing will probably be AUTONEWNG.) der Mouse uucp: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (05/17/88)
>>> Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is currently >>> marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file. There's been a number of times when I've been requesting some information, the answer to which could have been found in any of a number of groups, some of which I don't read and have no interest in reading. But I still want this information. What I do is cross-post to everywhere applicable, point out that I don't read a particular group, and that responses should be mailed. I really think that this debate falls under the same sort of category as getting rn to be totally quiet about what articles it's killing as it enters a newsgroup. i.e. an almost religious matter relating to personal preferences. (:-) to Chuq) Seriously, I've never understood why some people are so violently opposed to cross-posting. Only rarely does it get out of hand, and it's a useful feature to have. -- <---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- <---- Goodbye RAH.
davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) (05/17/88)
A long long time ago in an article far far away (<119@pigs.UUCP> to be exact) haugj@pigs.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) said:
-In article <439@bacchus.DEC.COM>, reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes:
-> I think that if you took a poll of the rank and file of the network, you
-> would find most people in support of a rule that talk.bizarre should not be
-> allowed to crosspost to ANYTHING. In general crossposting is a bad idea.
-> Crossposting from talk.bizarre is an especially bad idea.
-
Let people crosspost FROM talk.bizarre. Don't let people crosspost TO
talk.bizarre. That's where most of the trouble comes from. People who don't
understand the purpose of talk.bizarre.
[ But that message is not why I'm here... ]
-i don't know what the actual propagation for talk.bizarre is, but then
-i don't have any of the talk groups.
-
Talk.bizarre has an 82% propogation, if the latest arbitron list is to be
believed.
-i like it that way, keeps dR. bOb TeCh out of my disk drive.
-
Not necessarily. There's no reason (other than desire) why he can't post to
a non talk.* group. Unless you check automatically junk messages from him
when you unbatch articles...
-- john.
--
David Bedno (aka The Cat in the Hat) Now appearing at: davidbe@sco.COM -OR-
...!{uunet,ihnp4,decvax!microsoft,ucbvax!ucscc}!sco!davidbe -OR-
at home: 408-425-5266 at work: 408-425-7222 x5697 (I'm probably here...)
Disclaimer: Not SCO's opinions. At least not that they've told me.
"...or a baby's arm holding an apple."matt@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (D 1 4 U 2 C) (05/17/88)
In article <555@scovert.sco.COM> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes:
) Let people crosspost FROM talk.bizarre. Don't let people crosspost TO
) talk.bizarre. That's where most of the trouble comes from. People who don't
) understand the purpose of talk.bizarre.
Perhaps this is true from the point of view of a regular talk.bizarre
reader. From my point of view, and that of several people I have
talk or corresponded with, the "trouble" comes from talk.bizarre
regulars crossposting out. Sometimes they just don't know what some
other newsgroup is about, other times it is clear that their sole
purpose is to annoy people.
Besides, it would be damn hard for software to tell the difference
between crossposting "to" and "from" a newsgroup.
Mattsahayman@watmath.waterloo.edu (Steve Hayman) (05/18/88)
Not singling out anybody in particular but this has always bothered me: > But I still want this information. What I do is cross-post >to everywhere applicable, point out that I don't read a particular >group, and that responses should be mailed. Grrr. Why do people do this? If you're going to take the trouble to post a request to a group, and you expect people to answer, the least you can do is to read the group for a couple of weeks to see if anything turns up. Maybe other people will be interested in the answers too! Now of course if you say "please mail responses to me and I will summarize to the net", that's fine, that's great, I wish everybody would do that. But saying, in effect, "Mail responses to me since I can't be bothered to read this group, but I'm still entitled to post to it and take up your time" seems to me to be a bit, um, uncooperative. Steve Hayman
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (05/18/88)
In article <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> I wrote: :Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is :currently marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file. ... rationale omitted ... In article <6075@sigi.Colorado.EDU> swarbric@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Frank Swarbrick) writes: >I don't know how well this would work. I don't ever unsubscribe to newsgroups. >I just don't read them. This is probably true for a lot of people. >Or maybe I'm a little confused about something. When I got access my .newsrc >file had all of the currently available newsgroups already in it. Is this >not usually true at most sites? I think it varies a lot; a news administrator would probably be well off leaving most newsgroups unsubscribed and handing the novice newsreader a sheet of paper describing various useful facts. This sheet should probably be one or two pages and *very* simple to insure that it gets read ... I don't claim that this will work in all sites, or cure all known crossposting problems; but things can get real bad right now and if it helps a little, it's better than nothing. -- Richard Welty 518-387-6346 GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York welty@ge-crd.ARPA {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!welty ``I'm not making any of this up you know'' -- Anna Russell
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (05/18/88)
In article <10837@steinmetz.ge.com> I wrote: * Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is currently * marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file. In article <1107@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes: >I don't *have* a .newsrc - I use my own newsreader, and it keeps its >"messages read" information in an utterly incompatible format, so I >used another name (.readrc) for it. Does this mean I'm not allowed to >crosspost? If so, you can bet that'll be the second thing I'll fix >when we get the new version. (First thing will probably be AUTONEWNG.) Well, I suggest that there are (at least) two issues here: 1) to what extent must news enhancements/innovations take into account local modifications to established structures? Should developers of news software be limited in their actions because at certain sites local changes have been made that cannot be disturbed? 2) while I'm not at all familiar with news software internals, it seems to me to be basic software engineering practice to wire such things to compile time flags/constants/whatever so that they can be toggled, or even run time flags if that would be valuable. I would regard a bolthole for knowledgable news readers to subvert this restriction a resonable thing to have anyway. Of course, the above points apply equally to almost any other proposal that might come up. -- Richard Welty 518-387-6346 GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York welty@ge-crd.ARPA {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!welty ``I'm not making any of this up you know'' -- Anna Russell
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (05/18/88)
In some article from <steinmetz.ge.com> now missing from the references: line, I wrote: * Don't allow a user to post to a group unless the group is currently * marked as subscribed to in the user's .newsrc file. In article <9297@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >There's been a number of times when I've been requesting some >information, the answer to which could have been found in any of a >number of groups, some of which I don't read and have no interest in >reading. But I still want this information. What I do is cross-post >to everywhere applicable, point out that I don't read a particular >group, and that responses should be mailed. And you may be unaware of how many news readers dislike this sort of thing. In talking to various heavy readers, I find that such postings are generally among their pet peeves. They aren't quite as annoyed if the poster offers to summarize, though. The fact that I find this annoying is one of the reasons I am careful to subscribe to a group for a week or so before I post to it. >I really think that this debate falls under the same sort of category >as getting rn to be totally quiet about what articles it's killing >as it enters a newsgroup. i.e. an almost religious matter relating >to personal preferences. (:-) to Chuq) Well, I used to write graphical user interfaces at a now-defunct VLSI cad tools firm, and it never ceased to amaze me how having lots of customization features would make customers happy (even if they never actually used them, they liked the fact that they were there.) While news software is not a commercial product, and no one is getting paid much, if anything, to write it, authors of news programs may wish to keep in mind the fact that if it's easy to provide a flag (no matter how silly), it may well be better than making an arbitrary decision. >Seriously, I've never understood why some people are so violently >opposed to cross-posting. Only rarely does it get out of hand, >and it's a useful feature to have. It gets out of hand a *great* deal in some groups I read, and can be quite obnoxious if two groups really go after each other (witness the recent rec.bicycles/rec.autos flame war over right of way and responsible behaviour in traffic) -- Richard Welty 518-387-6346 GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York welty@ge-crd.ARPA {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!welty ``I'm not making any of this up you know'' -- Anna Russell
legare@ut-emx.UUCP (BoB teCh) (05/21/88)
In article <14754@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>, matt@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (D 1 4 U 2 C) writes: > In article <555@scovert.sco.COM> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes: > ) Let people crosspost FROM talk.bizarre. Don't let people crosspost TO > ) talk.bizarre. That's where most of the trouble comes from. People who don't > ) understand the purpose of talk.bizarre. > > Perhaps this is true from the point of view of a regular talk.bizarre > reader. From my point of view, and that of several people I have > talk or corresponded with, the "trouble" comes from talk.bizarre > regulars crossposting out. Sometimes they just don't know what some > other newsgroup is about, other times it is clear that their sole > purpose is to annoy people. Oddly enough, this is exactly the sort of opinion many talk.bizarre readers have about people who crosspost TO talk.bizarre. The fact still remains that a -majority- of the messages crossposted with "talk.bizarre" in their newsgroups line originate (or at least the _first_ article in the string originates) from _outside_ talk.bizarre territory, in fact from outside the talk. heirarchy completely. a brief rundown on the newsgroups from which articles have been crossposeted TO talk.bizarre: rec.humor rec.humor.funny rec.arts.startrek alt.sex soc.singles rec.pets [although most of this was richard's doing] rec.arts.comics rec.books misc.misc naturally this is an incomplete list, as I am merely a user and not a sysadmin. for those who haven't hit "n" reflexisvely when they saw the name, here's an outline of the pattern of crossposting behavior: step 1: initial article posted. poster of article thinks "hey, this is kinda bizarre" and adds talk.bizarre to the Newsgroups: line. step 2: article is transmitted to sites, in both the initial newsgroup, and talk.bizarre step 3: various people read the article. some decide to Follow-up the article. most of them do not edit the Newsgroups: line (it is assumed here that the majority of these people are reading the article in the newsgroup from which it was originally posted), so their follow-ups go to talk.bizarre as well. step 4: [OPTIONAL] various talk.bizarre readers request that the articles not be crossposted to talk.bizarre. step 5: [assuming the requests made in step 4 are ignored, as they were 80% of the time] more needless crossposting TO talk.bizarre. temperatures rise step 6: massive flameposting by various talk.bizarre people in an attempt to scare crossposters out of crossposting [yeah sure. we all know that the only REASON those nasty talk.bizarre people do this stuff is so they can clog up the network with lots of cuss words and get the whole thing shut down.] step 7: readers of newsgroup article was posted FROM flame talk.bizarre people for crossposting to THEIR group. much use is made of "well then WHY did YOU crosspost?" argument. steps 3 through 7 repeat endlessly unless curtailed by group consensus, as in the case of the rec.arts.startrek debacle. naturally, anyone who "doesn't read those talk. groups anyway" will receive incomplete data as to what all the yelling is about. ditto for anyone who doesn't read the rec.*, soc.* or whatever.* newsgroups. assuming that the crossposting problem will vanish the moment that the talk.* groups are dropped is as ludicrous as stating that the headaches will go away just as soon as we remove your arm. you're attacking a symptom without doing anything productive in the way of a cure. naturally, the "quick fix" of dropping talk.bizarre will make certain persons feel good, since they didn't want those senseless talk.* groups anyway, but there will still be crossposting. let's try and be a bit more openminded about "the crossposting problem", shall we? BoB teCh worming his way into your hard disks with a cry for sanity. > > Besides, it would be damn hard for software to tell the difference > between crossposting "to" and "from" a newsgroup. > > Matt
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (05/21/88)
In article <10879@steinmetz.ge.com> welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) writes: >In article <9297@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >>There's been a number of times when I've been requesting some >>information, the answer to which could have been found in any of a >>number of groups, some of which I don't read and have no interest in >>reading. But I still want this information. What I do is cross-post >>to everywhere applicable, point out that I don't read a particular >>group, and that responses should be mailed. >And you may be unaware of how many news readers dislike this sort of >thing. In talking to various heavy readers, I find that such postings >are generally among their pet peeves. They aren't quite as annoyed >if the poster offers to summarize, though. The fact that I find this >annoying is one of the reasons I am careful to subscribe to a group >for a week or so before I post to it. *I* am a "heavy" (but losing weight) news reader. In fact, you may remember that recent posting giving the 300 some odd most common lines in somebody's /usr/spool/news. Of the 4 posters from Kentucky, my roomate was the 1st one mentioned and I was the second -- the other two were close friends. I do offer to summarize, but generally don't find cross-posting to be a problem. (Like I said before). Any system can be misused and I think you're really complaining about misuses rather than faults in the system itself. >>Seriously, I've never understood why some people are so violently >>opposed to cross-posting. Only rarely does it get out of hand, >>and it's a useful feature to have. >It gets out of hand a *great* deal in some groups I read, and can be >quite obnoxious if two groups really go after each other (witness the >recent rec.bicycles/rec.autos flame war over right of way and responsible >behaviour in traffic) Or the flame wars between sys.amiga and sys.atari.st? Or between motorola people and intel people and nsc people? Or between SysV and BSD people? Religious arguments happen all the time. You won't be able to stop that. By limiting cross-posting you take away some potentially very useful conversations. The newsgroup hiearchy *cannot* be a good fit to the topics that are discussable. The questions is "what is *really* getting 'out of hand'"? Is it the way people are using the net? *That* is what I see is getting out of hand. I see bunches of people running around playing games basically, but the games are disrupting other people and costing places money. For instance. comp.theory.self-org-sys (or whatever the name is) has no traffic. Recently a bizarre-oid posted a message claiming it as his newsgroup, unless somebody came along and took it from him. Or the newgroup which went out for misc.vogon-news recently. Or the fella at penn-state that's posting things in "talk.ru" from time to time. (I don't know if that one is getting out, but it sometimes causes the majority of traffic in "junk" on this machine). Or any of a number of other things that I basically ignore and am glad that we no longer pay money to get. And yes, flame fests are annoying. But flame fests are annoying whether or not they are cross-posted. Maybe you could tell me why you think cross-posting is evil in and of itself? And how does cross-posting encourage flame fests? -- <---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <---- SKA: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- <---- Goodbye RAH.
vnend@engr.uky.edu (D. V. W. James) (05/23/88)
In article <2594@ut-emx.UUCP> legare@ut-emx.UUCP (BoB teCh) writes: >In article <14754@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>, matt@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (D 1 4 U 2 C) writes: >> In article <555@scovert.sco.COM> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes: >> ) Let people crosspost FROM talk.bizarre. Don't let people crosspost TO >> ) talk.bizarre. That's where most of the trouble comes from. People who don't >> ) understand the purpose of talk.bizarre. >> Perhaps this is true from the point of view of a regular talk.bizarre >> reader. From my point of view, and that of several people I have >> talk or corresponded with, the "trouble" comes from talk.bizarre >> regulars crossposting out. >Oddly enough, this is exactly the sort of opinion many talk.bizarre readers >have about people who crosspost TO talk.bizarre. The fact still remains that >a -majority- of the messages crossposted with "talk.bizarre" in their >newsgroups line originate (or at least the _first_ article in the string >originates) from _outside_ talk.bizarre territory, in fact from outside the >talk. heirarchy completely. >soc.singles >BoB >teCh Right!! Like the attempt to "take over" soc.singles a about a year and a half ago, back when I read talk.bizarre (and the main reason I stopped, that and the "Volume, Volume, Volume" drive that happened just before that. And after a couple of weeks of cross posting the bizarroids started saying "Who else can we get..." People abuseing poor talk .bizarre. Poor thing. -- Later y'all, {vnend@engr, cn0001dj@ukcc, mc.david@ukpr}.uky.edu; Vnend. And, (if I read it before it expires) VNEND on GEnie Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. and, {any vertibrae}!ukma!ukecc!vnend "We're all looking for lime-jello." Arthur Evans
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (05/24/88)
In article <9352@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >In article <10879@steinmetz.ge.com> welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) writes: >*I* am a "heavy" (but losing weight) news reader. In fact, you may >remember that recent posting giving the 300 some odd most common lines >in somebody's /usr/spool/news. Of the 4 posters from Kentucky, my >roomate was the 1st one mentioned and I was the second -- the other >two were close friends. And as I recall, I was pretty far up there myself ... gack. >I do offer to summarize, but generally don't find cross-posting >to be a problem. (Like I said before). >Any system can be misused and I think you're really complaining >about misuses rather than faults in the system itself. I never claimed that crossposting was bad per se. I argued that crossposting is a feature that is heavily abused, and proposed curbs on it in order to eliminate some of the more flagrant abuses. If no changes are made to the current crossposting system, then abuses will continue, because a large percentage of the news readership will remain ignorant of proper behavior. Nothing you can do outside of altering news itself will eliminate some of the abuses. ... various examples of crossposting flame wars omitted, as we agree that they happen ... >Religious arguments happen all the time. You won't be able to stop >that. >By limiting cross-posting you take away some potentially very useful >conversations. The newsgroup hiearchy *cannot* be a good fit to >the topics that are discussable. Well, I agree that a strict hierarchical organization has several obvious problems. The question is whether some set of restrictions might solve some current problems. As long as a reasonable way of coercing Pnews (or whatever) into allowing the behaviour when you really want it exists, I still believe that some simple restrictions on crossposting would do much, much more good than harm. >The questions is "what is *really* getting 'out of hand'"? Is it >the way people are using the net? *That* is what I see is getting >out of hand. I see bunches of people running around playing games >basically, but the games are disrupting other people and costing >places money. Well, yes, but the only way to control this is either for site administrators to jump on their users or for changes to the software to make abuse harder. >For instance. comp.theory.self-org-sys (or whatever the name is) >has no traffic. Recently a bizarre-oid posted a message claiming >it as his newsgroup, unless somebody came along and took it from >him. ... other examples of abuse omitted ... >Or any of a number of other things that I basically ignore and >am glad that we no longer pay money to get. well, yeah, but this string of articles is about crossposting, and these examples, fine ones though they be, have nothing to do with crossposting. >And yes, flame fests are annoying. But flame fests are annoying >whether or not they are cross-posted. Yeah, but there'd be a damn site fewer of them if there were restrictions on crossposting. >Maybe you could tell me why you think cross-posting is evil >in and of itself? I never said this. Since I never said this, and don't believe it, I won't bother defending it. > And how does cross-posting encourage flame >fests? Gack. I think that this has been addressed many times in many groups. I'll give one example, since you've asked, but if you can't find 5 or 10 on a superficial search, you're not looking very hard. Example: Moron wants lyrics to I-hate-you song from stiv. Crossposts request to n (n>10) newsgroups, including rec.arts.startrek (the correct group) and talk.bizarre (most assuredly not the correct newsgroup). A flame war then follows where many many trekkies and bizarrites flame at each other to get out of each others newsgroups. A bloody unpleasant mess, and throughly unnecessary. It was rather compounded by a number of individuals (on both sides of the fence) who enjoyed the obnoxious affair and kept the pressure (and flamage) up. Never would have happened if it were hard to crosspost. Wasted a lot of bandwidth. -- Richard Welty 518-387-6346 GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York welty@ge-crd.ARPA {uunet,philabs,rochester}!steinmetz!welty ``I'm not making any of this up you know'' -- Anna Russell
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (06/01/88)
In article <10960@steinmetz.ge.com> welty@steinmetz.UUCP (richard welty) writes: >In article <9352@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >>Religious arguments happen all the time. You won't be able to stop >>that. > >>By limiting cross-posting you take away some potentially very useful >>conversations. The newsgroup hiearchy *cannot* be a good fit to >>the topics that are discussable. > >Well, I agree that a strict hierarchical organization has several >obvious problems. The question is whether some set of restrictions >might solve some current problems. As long as a reasonable way of >coercing Pnews (or whatever) into allowing the behaviour when you really >want it exists, I still believe that some simple restrictions on >crossposting would do much, much more good than harm. Oh good. We agree ... for the most part >>The questions is "what is *really* getting 'out of hand'"? Is it >>the way people are using the net? *That* is what I see is getting >>out of hand. I see bunches of people running around playing games >>basically, but the games are disrupting other people and costing >>places money. > >Well, yes, but the only way to control this is either for site >administrators to jump on their users or for changes to the software >to make abuse harder. But there's no protection in the system to begin with. A lot of the people playing the games are usually pretty competent with the software and can read manual pages to see how to run inews and feed articles at will into the system. It's all well and good to come up with a posting program that fixes the headers with a limited distribution, complains about cross-posting, and so forth. And I would go along with such a posting program. And so long as I can still do the things I want to do (and you say you want to be able to do them too) then *everyone* will be *capable* of doing all the things you say they should not do. Not only will they be capable, but the techniques for doing so will eventually filter out to the people playing the games... How easy is it to get around the inews line counter? How many people told rn to use a different inclusion character after 2.11 came out? >well, yeah, but this string of articles is about crossposting, >and these examples, fine ones though they be, have nothing to do >with crossposting. Ever hear about subjects mutating? >>And yes, flame fests are annoying. But flame fests are annoying >>whether or not they are cross-posted. > >Yeah, but there'd be a damn site fewer of them if there were restrictions >on crossposting. I think this is a circular argument. You assume that cross-postings cause flame fests. I assume that they do not, that flames cause flame fests. >>Maybe you could tell me why you think cross-posting is evil >>in and of itself? > >I never said this. Since I never said this, and don't believe it, >I won't bother defending it. Maybe "evil" was a bad word. You may not have said anything along those lines but you certainly implied it. >> And how does cross-posting encourage flame >>fests? > >Gack. I think that this has been addressed many times in many groups. > >I'll give one example, since you've asked, but if you can't find >5 or 10 on a superficial search, you're not looking very hard. > >Example: Moron wants lyrics to I-hate-you song from stiv. Crossposts >request to n (n>10) newsgroups, including rec.arts.startrek (the correct >group) and talk.bizarre (most assuredly not the correct newsgroup). >A flame war then follows where many many trekkies and bizarrites flame >at each other to get out of each others newsgroups. A bloody unpleasant >mess, and throughly unnecessary. It was rather compounded by a number >of individuals (on both sides of the fence) who enjoyed the obnoxious >affair and kept the pressure (and flamage) up. Never would have happened >if it were hard to crosspost. Wasted a lot of bandwidth. Similar things can happen without cross-posting. Every newsgroup in existance has some subject which will cause the readers to go into conniptions (sp?) and post a 2 page followup disecting the posting to the nth degree. But this could go on and on and on. As I said above, I would go along with posting programs that watched for some unusual sorts of postings (crossing top-level boundries, cross-posting to >3 newsgroups, or whatever) and made mention of it while composing the article. Also some sort of default distribution would be helpful -- configurable on a per-user basis through the fascist file(?). But so long as it wasn't hard to get past all these barriers it would be reasonable. But I don't think it would make much difference. Exactly as much difference as the 4 line signature limit or the > counter has made in the current software. -- <---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <---- s.k.a.: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- <---- Goodbye RAH.
vnend@engr.uky.edu (D. V. W. James) (06/02/88)
I've been following the crossposting discussion for a while and what
I have missed on the net david@ms.uky.edu has been keeping me up to date on
(more or less.) Last night we were talking about it again and I had a thought
that he suggests is pass on to the net.
From person experiance I know that while a first posting that is cross-
posted has some (perhaps deviant) logic behind its crossposting, the follow-ups
and flames usually don't.
So why not fix this part of the loop? Have the newsreader send a line
to the posting program (inews in most cases), telling it what newsgroup the
person is generating the follow up from. Have the posting program add a new
line to the header in the article, something along the lines of
Original newsgroups: soc.foo,comp.bar,...
and a news-
groups line that only has in it the group being read.
This format allows the followup to still be cross posted,
*but the poster has to think to do it!* If no change is made by the
poster then the article is posted to only one newsgroup. If further
groups are desired then the poster can A) delete the newsgroups line and
change the Original Newsgroup line to be the current newsgroup line (
the situation that we have now) or can add a smaller subset of the
newsgroups manually. Either way we force the poster to *think* about
what he or she is doing. This should eliminate accidental crosspostings,
and to some extent limit cross-posted followups all together.
David thinks that this would require about 5 lines of code to
need to added to rn, and slightly more but simular amounts to other
newsreaders, and a short awk script to strip out the 'original news...'
line before posting. Maximum benefit for what sounds like a minor
cost. Does this sound like what people could use?
--
Later y'all, {vnend@engr, cn0001dj@ukcc, mc.david@ukpr}.uky.edu;
Vnend. And, (if I read it before it expires) VNEND on GEnie
Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. and, {any vertibrae}!ukma!ukecc!vnend
R.A.H. So long, and thanks for all the books.bob@cloud9.UUCP (Bob Toxen) (06/11/88)
In article <14748@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>, matt@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (Stop calling me Fred) writes: > In article <554@viscous> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes: > ) Actually, generally anything cross-posted between talk.bizarre and any > ) other newsgroup, is cross-posted to at least one wrong newsgroup. Ditto for alt.sex. People keep trying to dump net.morality, net.religion, and social.* into it. Most people posting opinions on this to alt.sex strongly object to the mixing. I'm not even gonna cross-post this. -- Bob Toxen {ucbvax!ihnp4,harvard,cloud9!es}!anvil!cavu!bob Stratus Computer, Marlboro, MA Westerly Bounce-Inn alumni