Re: FAQs and crossposting policies (fwd)

Tung-chiang Yang (tcyang@netcom.com)
Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:05:42 -0800 (PST)

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I might have sidetracked from the FAQ Maintainer mailing list topic (which
I hate), but you should remember that for an ISP like Netcom, it has the
capability to restrict its users from putting too many newsgroups in
Followup-To:, but Netcom has no capability and no right to demand users of
the other ISP's to do the same thing. When the Netcom news server receives
a post passed from some other servers, Netcom has only two choices: take it
or discard it. If Netcom server takes it, than it can further decide how
long the expiration will be.

In my opinion, it is better to allow a heavily crossposted item to show up
in the news server with a shorter expiration, than not allowing it to show
up at all.

I more or less support the idea proposed by Kent Landfield (or some other
friend, I apologize if I made a mistake here) that we FAQ maintainers
join force together to convince ISP's to take special consideration for
posts in "news.answers". We can move the discussion about crosspostings
to "news.admin.net-abuse.misc" and "news.admin.net-abuse.usenet".

I also agree that as more newsgroups are formed by splitting existing
newsgroups, probably crosspostings should be tolerated for more groups.
However, there are more than a thousand "alt.sex.xxx" groups carried by
Netcom, if I am right. What do you think if today I compile a sex FAQ,
and claim it is on-topic to all the thousands of groups so I crosspost
it to all these groups?

As more groups are formed from splitting the existing ones, I believe
the FAQ should also get splitted. Or, it stays in a "*.misc" group
of the splitted result and some short pointers in the specific groups
point to this document.

=====================================================
Forwarded message:
> Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 00:38 EDT
> Message-Id: <01IF1DB3P8HC9AN3K6@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
> From: "E. Allen Smith" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
> Subject: Re: FAQs and crossposting policies
>
> If the ISPs want a usable Usenet, then they do have an alternative -
> namely, developing that tech to restrict group cross-posting on a per-group
> basis. As it is, such rigid limits will cause more problems than they solve.
> Given how much various newsgroups have split up, even many non-FAQ articles
> are appropriately crossposted to 5+ groups.
> -Allen
>

Tung-chiang Yang tcyang@netcom.com

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