🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 10 Jul 1998 01:19:01 GMT, Brandon Sommerville <grimrod@mindless.moc> wrote:
>Joel Garry wrote:
>
>>Then how do I respond to someone who has posted to me in dc.driving?
>
>The beauty (?) of crossposting is that you are reading ca.driving,
>Earl is reading alt.law-enforcement and I am reading rec.autos.driving
>but we can still take part in the same discussion.
>
>Unsolicited e-mail is just plain rude.

But replies to postings are not unsolicited.

Scott and Earl are working under a big misapprehension about usenet:  that
everyone will see all posts all the time.  In fact, there are plenty of ways
that a post will not be seen.  This has been so common, even in the recent
past, that authors of newsreading software often put in the ability to
copy both the group and the author of the particular article being responded
to.  They usually also put in the ability to turn this off.  What I haven't
seen (certainly not in the stuff I've used, anyways), is the ability to 
send copies to everyone but those in a list.  In fact, Earl's request to
me was to take him off my list.  I don't have a list.  I'm mostly not using 
a PC.  If slrn or trn or rn have such an exception list, please let me 
know about it.

You see, usenet evolved as a cooperative effort.  As such, it is incumbent
upon each adminstrator to have everything set up correctly, and each user
to cooperate.  Unfortunately, adminstrators screw up, users perform hostile
acts, and the volume on usenet and the internet itself often cause things
to get lost.  Anyone who claims they've never seen an incident of a post
getting lost is either lying or just hasn't been on usenet very long.  Even
in the recent past there have been incidents of vandalism, such as the
Poetry Festival not too long ago, which simply denied service through
volume.  And even the guy who invented ethernet says 20-50% of packets
just plain don't make it where they are supposed to.  So it is actually a
very polite thing to do to cc a reply - those who say they don't want a
cc can deal with it themselves, it is just not a good assumption that all
posts will propagate everywhere always.

jg

>-- 
>Brandon
>
>"Spooooooooooonnnnn!"


-- 
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