Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!princeton!udel!gatech!mandrill!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!ubvax!vsi1!lmb
From: lmb@vsi1.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Distribution Enhancement Proposal
Message-ID: <638@vsi1.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jun 88 17:34:27 GMT
References: <4609@mnetor.UUCP>
Reply-To: lmb@vsi1.UUCP (Larry Blair)
Organization: VICOM Systems Inc., San Jose, CA
Lines: 30
Posted: Fri Jun  3 13:34:27 1988

In article <4609@mnetor.UUCP> lazer@mnetor.UUCP (Lazer Danzinger) writes:
>
>    Although USENET supports the distribution of articles based on
>    geographically expanding domains from the poster's site, e.g.,
>    local->toronto->ontario->canada->na->world; the support of "remote"
>    distribution would also be appreciated, and I think useful at times.
>    By "remote" distribution, I mean the ability to post an article, let's
>    say from here in Toronto, with a distribution limited to Los Angeles or
>    California.

The problem here is that news is only passed to other sites whose sys file
entry contains the distribution in the article.  If I wanted to post "nj",
the article would go nowhere, since none of my news neighbors takes "nj".

There are two improvements I would like to see.  The first creation of
regional distributions.  It is really annoying to see "Car for sale"
postings from from New Jersey posted with "us" (or more likely "world")
distribution because they want the posting to go to New York or
Pennsylvania.  The cost here is zero, so why not do it?

The other, which would require inews changes, is to establish a list of
gateways for non-local distribution areas and have inews mail postings
to the gateways.  The mechanism is similar to the moderated posting
currently performed by inews.
-- 
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