🚀 go-pugleaf

If you have a local newsgroup called "general", you will sometimes find
articles from other sites in that newsgroup. These articles will normally
have been cross-posted to general (by which the original poster meant
their *own* general newsgroup) and to a more widely-distributed group.
These other-site posts to general can confuse your users. (In fact, if you
check general on your own site, you may find some fairly shrill arguments
about the U.S. presidential election that were cross-posted to soc.singles
and general.)

My advice, for what it's worth, is not to use "general" as the name for
your local general newsgroup. Instead, name it <site name>.general. 
For example, contact.uucp, a now-defunct public access site in Toronto,
called its general newsgroup contact.general. 

This way, both your users and the rest of the net will benefit. They won't
wonder about (or reply or follow up to) posts from other sites in "general",
and if they should cross-post an article to your local <site name>.general
and a more widely-distributed one, it won't show up in "general" at othe
sites.

I suppose this idea must have been porposed before, but "general" still
seems to be the name most sites have chosen for their local general newsgroup.

Nigel Allen          nigel.allen@bbs.oit.unc.edu

(The usual disclaimers apply. My opinions only.)