piet@mcvax.UUCP (Piet Beertema) (06/22/84)
<I KNOW there are still old versions around, even in Europe...>
Well, the "Distribution" was put up as a solution to the problem long ago
already when there was a heavy debate on creating groups like "world.general".
BUT lots of people still don't use it, be it through ignorance, lazyness or
just a habit to hit the RETURN key on the "Distribution" line. Perhaps it
should be done the hard way: refuse to send an article UNLESS a specific
distribution is given (so just RETURN not allowed).
--
Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam
...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!pietgurr@west44.UUCP (Dave Gurr) (06/28/84)
< force of habit ... > Some of you may remember an article I posted ages ago <225@west44.UUCP> which proposed a new set of groups, ie na.all, us.all etc for some specific groups. I have had some interesting responses to this - not just from europe, but from the US and Australia too. The main consensus of opinion is that too many items of merely local or national interest are posted to the world distribution newsgroups. At first, I thought that the only way to alleviate the problem would be the provision of more national groups, however thanks to those people who responded to my articles (mulga!kre, oddjob!matt, ut-sally!riddle) my attention was drawn to the 'Distribution' prompt that occurs when using postnews. What this field does is to ensure that although the article is in the group selected, it is only distributed to sites that receive the group(s) listed in the distribution field. For instance, if you are in New Jersey and you want to sell your car, your group list may be 'net.auto, nj.wanted' and the distribution field could be 'nj.wanted'. The article would be in net.auto and nj.wanted, but would only go to sites in New Jersey. Wonderful solution, isn't it!? Shame it doesn't work properly tho. The notes/ notefiles interface does not support the distribution fields, and neither do news versions preceding 2.10. Two solutions arise here - SOMEONE PLEEZE PRODUCE A FIX FOR NOTES TO HANDLE DISTRIBUTION, and, if you know of a site administrator who is running pre 2.10 news and is just too lazy to put in 2.10, give him a damn good kick up the ass. I would like to see people using this feature. It does work, and is very useful. If someone whose name carries greater weight than mine could post an article about the use of the distribution feature in some appropriate group (mark - net.announce?) and if chuq could add soemthing on distribution to his truly wonderful (and already well revised!) emily-post for usenet, then a lot of people in the europe (not to mention the US) would be very happy indeed. mcvax "You can't clean the \ toilet Neil, real students ukc!west44!gurr don't do that!" / vax135 Dave Gurr, Westfield College, Univ. of London, England.