Re: what is the concept of "follow up-to" while posting ?

Curt Welch wrote:

First, no one seemed to answer to you first question about what Followup-To
was used for or what it did. Did you figure that out in all the
discussion?

It's a header that lists a set of newsgroups and when anyone posts a
follow-up message, it gets sent to the newsgroups in the Followup-To:
header instead of to the groups in the Newsgroups: header.

Actually it is a suggestion to the newsreader that it should send
replies to the list of newsgroups specified in that header. Some NNTP
clients will prompt you, some will not, but I haven't seen any that
force you to use that list of newsgroups (i.e., you can enter whatever
you want in the Newsgroups header in your reply which can be the same or
different than the original list).

the Followup-TO reducing the discussion to a smaller set of groups -
typically just one of the original groups. It was added because it's
considered bad form to force a potentially long thread to fill up multiple
groups.

Therein also lies the rudeness is using the FollowUp-To header. You
post to newsgroups to gather attention. Yet then you yank that
discussion away from those that decide to participate in the newsgroups
they visit and where you chose to visit.

I haven't seen a newsreader for a long time that cannot collapse
threads. Even the webnews clients can do that. Since the article is
cross-posted, it consumes only the space for ONE copy of that article
with links to it in each cross-posted group. For N cross-posted groups,
there is still just 1 article for all of them.

That the article is inappropriate for a particular group that was
included in the cross-posting is a different issue. Except for
announcement groups or those used only to provide exhibits (like for
spam e-mails) and where discussions of them are to proceed in another
group, use of the FollowUp-To header to remove a discussion from the
cross-posted groups is rude to those that visit those other groups.

However, I have to agree with Mike. Cross posting is almost always wrong.
Usenet would have been far better if the feature was just never added.

The problem with that logic is it assumes the poster already knows so
much about the topic that they would know which of multiple similar
groups to which they should post. But if that were true then it is
likely they wouldn't have to post at all if they understood the problem
to that depth. When asking about a problem with, say, Microsoft Outlook
and there are 2 general newsgroups that discuss this product, why would
one group be more appropriate than the other? Why should the user have
to compile a history of each of those almost-identical groups to figure
out which one had more traffic, less trolls, or provided the best and
quickest help before they even posted?

Cross-posting should be very limited, if used at all. All groups should
be closely related so the cross-posted message is definitely on-topic in
each group. However, FollowUp-To should almost never be used. If a
discussion isn't appropriate to continue it within a group then don't
cross-post over there and then be rude in trying to yank it away.

Followup-To was added to reduce the problems that cross posting caused.
Both features are advanced user features that worked fine when most people
using Usenet were advanced users and stopped working a few decades back as
Usenet became flooded with newbies.

That would be back in 1993 when AOL added newsgroups. In the last few
years, the new influx of worse Usenet-ignorants are those coming from
forums that use a gateway to Usenet as they are kept isolated from
Usenet. These are forums that are trying to lie about the size of their
forum community or deliberately cater to boobs that can barely figure
out how to use a web browser and couldn't figure out an NNTP client.

There are only a few rare exceptions where cross posting is valid, and even
fewer where Followup-To is valid.

Amen.

The typical reason people cross-post is because they are selfish jerks
trying to get free help from as many people as they can bother, or
desperate attention seekers that like to inflate their own ego by forcing
people to read their nonsense. Neither are valid reasons for cross
posting.

I think that depends on which groups you visit. Those where users are
asking for help tend to use cross-posting because they're not quite sure
where to post and the groups seem related to them. However, in
scientology, political, kook, and other such flame-pro groups, I suppose
this header does get abused just like trolls, flamers, and spammers want
to incite a war in other groups to draw in a crowd or redirect negative
replies into the *.test bitbucket.

Usenet groups group designed so that every possible topic to be discussed
has one, and only one place, where it best fits.

Yet with 30,000 real groups, thousands of duplicated groups, more
thousands of bogus groups, and lots of dead groups, that still doesn't
mean there is one that is exactly on-target to the poster's discussion.
It also presupposes the poster is an expert in the topic of their
discussion that they would know exactly where to post.

If your topic seems to cover multiple groups, there is seldom any reason to
post it to multiple groups. It's not the group you are seeking by posting.
It's the readers who might read, and reply to your message you are seeking
the attention of. Whatever your topic, there will always be one group,
that it fits better than any other. If you post to that group, you will
get the people on Usenet who care most about that topic, reading your post.

Before getting too far here in what they should do, remember that most
users that post questions about hardware of software have yet to break
the binding on the manual or do a search in the product's own help file.
They don't bother doing an online search and don't go searching in the
manufacturer's support knowledgebase or FAQs. I think you are expecting
way too much of the users that come to Usenet to ask for help.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Cross-Posting (X-Posting) Preferable to Multi-Posting? - Re: An admission that CIA t
    ... Well, there are no actual *laws* in Usenet, are there? ... & in Usenet it's down to the people *reading* the Newsgroups, ... Cross-Posting is preferable to Multi-Posting. ...
    (uk.people.silversurfers)
  • Re: what is the concept of "follow up-to" while posting ?
    ... Followup-To was used for or what it did. ... it gets sent to the newsgroups in the Followup-To: ... header instead of to the groups in the Newsgroups: ... I've written two Usenet clients (more if you count clients designed ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: About capacity planning and scalability ...
    ... instead of cross-posting. ... if you post the same thing in several groups, don't multi-post. ... groupnames listed in the Newsgroups: ... Set the 'Followups-To' header to the name of the ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: Windows Updates Drivers
    ... Are you sure you shouldn't crosspost to the other half ... > of usenet?!? ... There is nothing wrong with cross-posting, if there was, then MS would not ... And 4 newsgroups isn't even half of MS's XP newgroups, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Windows Updates Drivers
    ... Are you sure you shouldn't crosspost to the other half ... > of usenet?!? ... There is nothing wrong with cross-posting, if there was, then MS would not ... And 4 newsgroups isn't even half of MS's XP newgroups, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)