On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 09:11:07PM -0400, Jeff Kinz wrote: > It shouldn't be. Cross posting has been around almost as long as the > internet itself. Twenty plus years. It has long been a supported and > accepted practice on Usenet in mailing lists. As an old fart who has been active on Usenet since the mid-80s (and google searches will verify that), let me clarify that Usenet is unrelated to mailing lists. For many years, it was nearly impossible to figure out where to e-mail an article to get it posted on Usenet. NNTP was, and still is, the protocol to use. NNTP does not equal e-mail. The phrase "accepted practice on Usenet in mailing lists" does not make any sense. The significant difference between cross-posting on Usenet is that the server typically held only a single copy of the article with links to each newsgroup the article was referenced in. With e-mail lists, the user will receive multiple copies. For those on slower dial-up lines or who have metered service, this adds delays and/or costs. By forcing people to filter out the cross-postings, you could have a tendency to aggravate the listeners. If traffic gets excessive for me, I just drop the list and people who might have received an answer from me will suffer. I tend to answer a lot more postings than I ask so the net effect is that the audience will suffer more than me. > > Cross-posting is rude > When it is done abusively, otherwise its a normal email practice. It's definitely not normal. In the vast majority of cases, you should be able to figure out where the posting should go. In many cases, it probably doesn't matter if you post to redhat-list or shrike-list for RHL 9 questions, but in most cases you have no reason to post to both. Cross-posting ranks right up there with spam. > > > Since the person asking the question generally cannot tell if the problem is > > > release specific it makes no sense for them to restrict the posting to a > > > list-specific release. If you don't know for sure if it's a shrike question or a general question, and you're running shrike or want to upgrade from psyche to shrike, then you should probably post to the shrike list. > > > Also many of the folks who are on the RedHat general > > > list are very happy to learn about release specific issues there. Then follow the release-specific lists. If I don't care about 7.3 or 8.0 issues, I shouldn't have to read all about them on redhat-list. They should be on valhalla or psyche. Make it ugly for people on redhat-list and membership will drop. Just say no to cross-posting on e-mail lists. -- Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:ewilts@xxxxxxxxxx Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program
