John Kopf wrote:
> According to Nick Boalch, the various FAQ-related FAQs are posted
> regularly to news:news.answers, news:alt.answers, news:rec.answers, etc.
>
> I'm on AT&T, and I've not seen them for years. Talking to people on
> other ISPs, they apparently don't see them either.
>
> I've tried to get info out of AT&T, but the "customer service" people
> have never heard of "news", and keep talking about web sites!
>
> The problem apparently is that AT&T throttles cross-posting, rejecting
> any article posted to more than 4 groups at once (this has apparently
> become an internet standard). I suspect that this is true of many
> ISPs. The FAQ-faqs go to news.answers, alt.answers, rec.answers,
> sci.answers, etc., for a total of 8!
>
> I'm not sure how to proceed on this, but suggest that the "rules" be
> modified to exempt the *.answers newsgroups from the "no more than 4
> crossposts" rule (i.e., not count them toward crossposting).
The problem is that those "rules" are just about impossibly
difficult to get changed. The problems you had getting through to
someone at AT&T who understood Usenet news -- scale them up by an
order of magnitude or two, and that's about how hard it would be
to find the person at AT&T in a position to change those rules,
and convince them to do it. Now repeat for each major news site
that implements this particular heavyhanded spam-control tactic.
(Or, at least, the rules were just about impossibly difficult to
get changed the last time anyone tried. As Edward Reid pointed
out in a later reply, perhaps it might be easier now.)
Another set of "rules" that we might consider changing are the
ones that suggest/require that news.answers-approved FAQ lists
be crossposted (and to as many .answers newsgroups) the way they
are now. (But it seems to me we've discussed this before, so I
probably shouldn't reopen that debate, especially since I can't
remember the previous outcome.)
If the current de facto limit on crossposted newsgroups is
really four, it sounds like it's just about impossible to post
an FAQ list to more than one "home" newsgroup any more.
One of these days I've got to adjust the Newsgroups: line of
the comp.lang.c FAQ list. I'm getting the impression that
lots of newsgroup readers aren't seeing it, and it's currently
crossposted to six newsgroups, which is surely the reason why.
> (while we're at it, it would be useful if the ISPs retained the
> *.answers groups for at least a month -
That it would.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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