phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (11/28/85)
In article <893@osu-eddie.UUCP> karl@osu-eddie.UUCP writes: > Convention has held for a long time that >discussions should be held in one place, with pointers (if necessary) >posted to other newsgroups, perhaps to multiple other newsgroups. I'm not so sure this is the convention. I can't remember the last time I saw this happen. Most articles are cross posted, like they should be. The trouble with your scheme is that I have to read all your pointers as well as the main article. If you cross post it, then I only have to skip or read it once. You are looking for a method of indicating "this article belongs in net.x but I thought the net.y people would be interested also". I think the use of pointer articles is an expensive and annoying way to do so. Unless the original article is over a screenful, each pointer article (with the header overhead) will be 50% to 90% of the cost of the pointed to data. With cross posting, the cost of each extra group is merely the number of characters in the newsgroup's name, 9 bytes in the case of net.women. I just looked at a few typical articles. An average 25 line article has 12 lines of header. There were 487 bytes in the header and 767 bytes in the body. If this got cross posted to 3 other groups, the total number of bytes would be: 487 + 3*9 + 767 = 1461 If you posted 3 pointer articles in addition, the total would be: 4*487 + 3*40 + 767 = 2855 (assume 40 bytes of text in each pointer article) This is 195% as many bytes as cross posting. So your method costs almost twice as much as cross posting. And is very annoying too. -- The INS arrested the Rajneesh for trying to leave the country and then deported him. Phil Ngai +1 408 749-5720 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.dec.com