Subject:
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CFD: rec.toys.lego feed here
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Mon, 26 Oct 1998 21:48:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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866 times
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As of today, there have been half a doezn posts to rec.toys.lego already which
were crossposted to one or more lugnet.* newsgroups. Of course, those messages
will never make it here because this server doesn't carry rec.toys.lego and
doesn't communicate with other newsservers because these groups aren't part of
Usenet (and we want to keep it that way because Usenet is a real mess).
I don't know what to do to stop the crossposting. It seems it's only going to
get worse, and that caching nnrp servers might not even be smart enough to
automatically avoid crossposting.
Looking for suggestions. Possible solutions off the top of my head are:
1. Ignore the whole issue and let things continue to deteriorate. (Not a real
option.)
2. Write a specialized newsreading agent which scans alt.toys.lego and
rec.toys.lego looking for articles crossposted to lugnet.* groups.
Requires manually posting & emailing reminder notes explaining that
crossposting doesn't work.
3. Write a specialized agent as a back-end to #2 which automatically posts
follow-up reminders and e-mails the authors, explaining that they mis-
posted their message.
4. Write a cancelbot which scans alt.toys.lego and rec.toys.lego looking for
articles mis-cross-posted to lugnet.* groups, and cancels them as soon as
they appear.
5. Carry rec.toys.lego here on this server, so that messages crossposted to
rec.toys.lego and lugnet.* groups would show up in their respective
lugnet.* groups as intended by their authors. Messages posted by persons
who haven't gone through the News Posting Setup procedure would go into the
bit bucket.
6+. ???
Number 5 seems like an obvious choice, but it's not as simple as it sounds.
There are at least 3 sub-possibilities for #5:
5a. Don't actually carry rec.toys.lego here, but simply obtain a feed, and
extract articles from it which are cross-posted to lugnet.* newsgroups --
simply so that they show up as intended by their authors (subject to their
authors being recognized by the system, of course).
5b. Carry a read-only feed of rec.toys.lego, so that #5a happens and also so
that people can read RTL here conveniently if their newsreader doesn't
support multiple NNTP servers.
5c. Carry rec.toys.lego and allow posting to it as well as reading.
A few weeks ago, people indicated that a read-only feed of rec.toys.lego here
would add no value to their online experience. I agreed at the time. But I
see 2 advantages that a read-only feed would have over no feed at all:
- Articles crossposted to lugnet.* groups could find their way to their
intended destination.
- Articles posted to RTL by people who haven't signed up to post here would
not appear here.
Disadvantages I see in carrying rec.toys.lego and allowing people to post to it
from here:
- 'Newsgroups:' and 'Followup-To:' header lines may become excessively
cluttered with massive amounts of crossposting between rec.toys.lego and
lugnet.* newsgroups. I suppose this is mainly only an eyesore.
- People would not always see all the follow-ups to the messages they post,
because follow-ups to their messages which aren't from recognizable authors
would not make it back here. Someone would have to read rec.toys.lego on
a standard Usenet feed in order to guarantee that they see all follow-ups
to the messages they post.
--Todd
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: CFD: rec.toys.lego feed here
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| (...) 6. Change your server config to transparently ignore messages crossposted to valid lugnet groups and RTL. My guess is that people doing this (maybe I'm giving people too much credit?) have some setup (like a caching server) where they can in (...) (26 years ago, 26-Oct-98, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: CFD: rec.toys.lego feed here
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| (...) You can't do this. It's unethical to cancel someone else's post when it is not spam. Even if they happen to have cross-posted to lugnet.(something) I'd say the best option is to ignore it. If you see one cross-posted, and you want to, send a (...) (26 years ago, 26-Oct-98, to lugnet.admin.general)
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