TMack said:
And so what if there are similar answers in different groups?
So ... anyone who follows all of those groups will see several different
discussions in dfferent places.
Whereas if the original question had been crossposted there would be only
one discussion -- with less repetition and more opportunity for fruitful
exchange -- and most decent newsreaders would only show it in one place.
I'm not arguing in favour of crossposting - I agree that it's done too often
and is usually inappropriate. What I *am* doing is to make two points:
1. Crossposting isn't automatically always evil. There are occasions when it
can be helpful and constructive to involve the communities of two or more
newsgroups in a discussion so that people with different interests and
expertise can all contribute, and the discussion will benefit from the
combination of their inputs.
2. Multiposting is always worse than crossposting.
There's also a third issue I was deliberately not making so much of, which
is that using followups is often also not a good idea. The usual advice is
that when crossposting one should set a followup-to just one of the groups
so that all the discussion takes place in just one group. It turns out that
that is usually not productive, because people who don't normally follow the
chosen followup group will probably not take the trouble to involve
themselves in the discussion - they might post once (though most don't
bother) but they won't see any further discussion or be able to enlarge upon
it. As most decent newsreaders will only show the discussion in one of the
subscribed groups it makes much more sense to allow the discussion to
continue to exist in all of them so that everyone gets the benefit of being
able to see all the replies.
This assumes that the thread is, and remains, on-topic in all of the groups,
of course. If the thread is not on topic in some of the groups that is an
argument against cross-posting to that group, not an agrument in favour of
followups (especially if the poster choses to set the followup to the
inappropriate group).
Setting followups after the thread has started is fatal. Each poster might
set followups to a different group and the discussion would become as
fragmented as in the multiposting case, with the additional problem that the
discussion might get taken to a group that the original poster did not chose
(and might not even be able to access).
The title of a group is not enough to be confident that a post is
appropriate - the OP should have read the charters.
Please don't quote me out of context. The rest of my paragraph said:
Posting to fewer groups might have been better,
but multiposting would defintely not.
The point I was making was against multiposting not in favour of
crossposting or of the OP's choice of u.c.vendors.
I'm not sure, though, now that you mention it, that anything the wording at
http://www.usenet.org.uk/uk.comp.vendors.html says anything to exclude the
OP's post - vendors, after all, are people who sell stuff ... and so set
prices. People discussing vendors on the 'net might legitimately be
discussing many aspects of the vendors' business, including the prices they
charge -- and that is what the question was about.
Cheers,
Daniel.
