dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (09/16/83)
Now everyone's asking me what "Distribution" does. OK, here goes:
When you use postnews in news 2.10, you are first asked for "Newsgroups"
and then for "Distribution". If you don't type anything for Distribution,
it currently uses the same as "Newsgroups".
Distribution operates to limit the distribution of an article. It
will stay in the newsgroup posted, but only go to those machines which
get the group specified in the Distribution.
Thus, I could do the following:
Newsgroups (general): net.wanted
Distribution (net.wanted): can.all
(or I could just say "can").
This would send the article to net.wanted, but only
sites which receive can.all (Canadian sites) would get it.
Another example: suppose I want to ask a question of everyone on
my system who plays rogue. I can do:
Newsgroups (general): net.games.rogue
Distribution (net.games.rogue): general
Since other machines don't get "general" from here, it
will stay on this machine. Mark Horton tells me that if
you use something unrecognized (say "local"), it will
not get distributed anywhere, which leads to the same thing.
Please, people, find out what your local subnets are. Here in Toronto
we have net, can, ont, tor. There's nothing wrong with putting a question
into net.general IFF it's of general interest to everyone local, and you
limit the distribution.
As an aside, I would like to see the distribution changed so that
from postnews, you have to specify explicitly one of "net" or a
relevant subnet. This will force people to think about what they are
sending out. Much/most of the stuff on the net today does indeed need
to go netwide (if it needs to go anywhere, which is another question).
But many inquiries, etc., could stay local. (Perhaps one way to deal with
novices is to give them a default "local" only. Once they read the
appropriate netiquette document, they will find out in the document
how to change this default (say $DISTRIBUTION) to "net"!)
--
{cornell,decvax,floyd,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver,watmath}!utcsrgv!lsuc!davealb@alice.UUCP (09/18/83)
It would be nice if readnews printed the distribution header if it were present in the article. In this way, people wouldn't flame back to an article in net.general if they saw it was just local.