Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!bbn!oliveb!amdahl!dlb!dave
From: dave@dlb.uucp (Dave Buck)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: C News: use of = in active
Message-ID: <1989Aug16.152943.26381@dlb.uucp>
Date: 16 Aug 89 15:29:43 GMT
Organization: D.L.Buck&Assoc.;San Jose,Calif. USA
Lines: 22

In the Bay Area, we have three similar news groups: ba.wanted, ba.market,
and ba.forsale.  Bozos here frequently post "For Sale: Twin-sized WaterBed"
articles to all of these, plus ba.general, to get the best possible
coverage.  While I'm annoyed at the ba.general crosspostings, there doesn't
seem to be much I can do to filter these out.  However, it does seem that
I can locally combine ba.wanted, ba.market, and ba.forsale into one single
group, ba.market.

Looking at the C News documentation, it appeared to me that this form of
aliasing was handled by having the last field in the active file for
ba.wanted and ba.forsale be "=ba.market".  Sure enough, nothing now falls
into ba.wanted or ba.forsale.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that an article posted into ba.wanted and ba.market
winds up as two separate articles in ba.market, ba/market/6994 and
ba/market/6995.  The Xref header lists ba.market:6994 and ba.market:6995.

I suppose this must've been the intention, but I don't like the results.
Is there a better way?
-- 
Dave Buck	{amdahl,sun,megatest,plx,ardent,ubvax}!dlb!dave
D. L. Buck and Associates, Inc.; San Jose, California 95119; (408)972-2825