Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ihlpb!nevin1 From: nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Liber) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Usenet is not a BBS Message-ID: <8545@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Date: 17 Aug 88 00:45:08 GMT References: <401@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <6627@conexch.UUCP> <1917@looking.UUCP> <8544@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Reply-To: nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 36 In the spirit of my last article, let me propose a variation of Brad Templeton's proposal: Proposal: There should be a followup group called 'mail', which the news software would automatically mail the followup instead of posting it. Pros: For all those people who request things by mail, there would be a lot less posted followups. Cons: Automatically generated mail paths are not very reliable. How some people go around it: save the message, and post a followup to a parent article or just post a message to the group. Possible implementation: Path of parent is kept in a header line while the article/letter is being edited (this allows it to be stripped down or changed, if necessary). Just before posting, if the newsgroup is "mail", then the article is mailed. What kinds of new traffic will be generated as a result of this change: None that I can think of (yet). Why put it in at all: To get more people to mail replys instead of posting them. Will the proposal meet the goal: I think it will help. Sorry I rambled on for so long. It's just that I hate to see well-intentioned ideas cause more harm than good because of lack of research. -- _ __ NEVIN J. LIBER ..!att!ihlpb!nevin1 (312) 979-???? IH 4F-410 ' ) ) There is something embarrassing about working at / / _ , __o ____ AT&T and not being able to get a *PHONE*! :-) / (_