Re: A proposal on how to deal with Inger's posts ...

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:32:09 -0600, Stein R <steinjr@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

--- snip ---

> I do that too. I chose to ignore most of Ingers drivel. And most of
>the followups that people crosspost. But I am also giving you a basic
>class in how the Usenet is supposed to work, since it seems like you
>have not understood the difference between crossposting an invitation
>to take part in a debate and crossposting the debate itself.
>

The ability to cross-post is almost as old as Usenet and is built into
the structure of the headers on Usenet messages.

When not abused, cross-posting can be beneficial in that it readily
involves in a discussion participants with a range of complementary
fields of interest.

If you like, holding a discussion under a number of different
sub-headings divides the discussion into discrete vertical parts.
Cross posting enables the horizontal connection of the vertical parts.

Your suggestion of posting a notice that an interesting discussion is
being held in such and such a group is the ancestor of cross-posting.

The problem with your preferred practice is that many people will find
that they will have to subscribe to the particular group to
participate in the discussion. That means they will have to
down-load/read (or whatever) everything else in that group just to get
at the part they want.

Another problem is that if people don't subscribe to the group in
which the discussion is being hosted it is likely that they will never
find out whether or not they had anything useful to contribute.

Cross-posting enables a discussion to be linked across a number of
independent groups without requiring all participants to subscribe to
all the groups involved.




Eric Stevens

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