Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!karl From: karl@tut.UUCP Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Novel new idea to stop followups Message-ID: <2476@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: Mon, 30-Nov-87 21:50:12 EST Article-I.D.: tut.2476 Posted: Mon Nov 30 21:50:12 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 3-Dec-87 22:39:06 EST References: <1173@looking.UUCP> Reply-To: karl@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: OSU Lines: 25 Xref: utgpu news.admin:1291 news.software.b:933 In-reply-to: brad@looking.UUCP's message of 29 Nov 87 06:34:04 GMT brad@looking.UUCP writes: People in the past have suggested that followups shouldn't be done until after all the news in a group is read. Here's a further suggestion. Change inews so that it rejects any local poster who is: a) in rn, readnews, vnews or any other news reading program b) accessed his .newsrc file within say, the last half hour. It misses too many obvious workarounds, several of which exist right now. Case in point, I'm reading/posting from inside GNU Emacs. My normal *modus operandi* is to create an Emacs which lives all day on my Sun; there is no way to detect that I'm using this "news-reading program," because it's as likely to be editing /usr/lib/aliases one minute as following up to an article the next. And it's quite possible that my .newsrc won't get updated for fairly long periods when I'm catching up on a (long) weekend's worth of news on Monday. Worse, from my point of view, is that my work requires me to post to local newsgroups fairly often. Even if you provide "deliberate bypasses," it'll cause me more trouble than it's worth. It's not a bad idea, but it needs some work before it's usable. I get enough flack from people for the more-new-than-quoted-text rule in 2.11 inews. I don't need another headache. -- Karl