And it came to pass that Neil Nelson wrote:
>Holger Metzger wrote
>
>
>> Not sure, but I think this is a GNKSA requirement. When
>> crossposting
>> excessively you have to set a follow-up to one single
>> group. But you are right, Mozilla should only /warn/ about
>> excessive crossposting and /recommend/ to set a follow-up
>> to and not refuse to post.
>
>I do not know what a GNKSA requirement is, but cross-posting
>has been going on for the many years I have been posting to
>Usenet. I would agree that sometimes people post to
>newsgroups where the subject is off-the-wall for the
>newsgroup, but it seems that just as often people will post
>an off-the-wall subject to a single newsgroup. I do not care
>to read the majority of the posts in a newsgroup for a
>variety of reasons of which one in many cases is that the
>post does not make sense to me to have been posted, and then
>we have the spam posts. In my experience my level of
>irritation for cross-postings has been almost non-existent,
>whereas it has moderately occurred that I will reply to
>cross- posted posts. On balance I see no problem at all with
>cross- posting on Usenet and see it useful in some cases.
>
As you say, limited crosspoting can be beneficial in a few
cases, but generally is a bad idea. It's mostly a matter of
courtesy.
Different newsgroups exist for a reason: while the overall
topic may be the same (ie Mozilla), but each group usually has
broken down the overall topic into smaller chunks. Someone
discussing mail-news may not be concerned with Java
compatibility issues. As some folks in the international
community pay by the minute for their phone connection, and by
the minute for the internet connection, and nby the kilobyte for
downloads, crossposting increases their costs and forces them to
spend money on issues they have no interest in discussing. Thi
is even more frustrating when you've downloaded for offline
reading and discover that 2/3 of discussion is actually not
pertinent to the very specific subject of the group.
It can also cause friction between different disciplines: I
wokr in professional theatre, and a while back someone
crossposted a question about sound equipment to the stagecraft
grup and a recording group. On the face of it, it seems to make
sense.
In reality it sparked a lively little flamewar as the two
groups, while using the same equipment, have totally different
goals for the equipment. What's right for recording is
inappropriate for performance reinforcement and vice versa, and
never the twain shall meet.
>In an effort to over-kill my point ... I expect that
>information theory will support the position that any topic
>organization method will be inefficient for some topics.
>This derives from the fact programming different language
>will have different efficiencies for different purposes. A
>particular information organization method such as the
>current Usenet topic hierarchy suggested by the title of the
>groups represents a language that becomes inefficient with
>respect to some possible alternate organizations. I expect
>it can be shown that some efficiencies can be reclaimed by
>regrouping (cross-posting) the detail groups for local
>purposes. The point here is that removing the ability to
>cross-post is likely against a provable, on-balance useful
>advantage.
>
As you will discover, in this issue GNKSA only requires that you
be informed that you are responding to message cross-posted
tomore than four groups, and that you be given an option to
limit the groups you respond to, and to limit the groups that a
reply to your message will appear in.
Which is really a very good idea; in Communicator, which is NOT
GNKSA compliant, I responded to a post that was extremely off
topic to the group I was reading; it was, however, ON topic to
the three of the other eight groups it was posted to. Had I
been alerted to the crossposts, I could have handled it
differently.
--
}:-) Christopher Jahn
{:-( Dionysian Reveler
Wake up, the whole world's gone...
To reply: xjahnATyahooDOTcom
