a said:
It's called casting a wide net to catch a bigger audience.
No, it's called shotgunning (for the effect you note). It also means you
haven't a clue where to post so you just scatter it everywhere. If you are
unwilling to find and decide on an appropriate newsgroup, why would anyone
else give any more consideration to your post than you did?
Different posters have different thresholds as to what they consider
EXCESSIVE cross-posting. My threshold is at 4; however, I simply kill file
anyone posting to 4, or more, groups so I wouldn't see their posts to notify
them that shotgunning means their post is unimportant because THEY decided
it was unimportant (by not employing any initiative of their own to pick a
valid newsgroup). Some users' threshold is down at 3, and some even down to
2 (i.e., they don't believe cross-posting is ever applicable). The more
newsgroups you add, the more likely that your post is off-topic to some of
them. There are some newsgroups that are duplicates of each other, like
microsoft.public.outlook and microsoft.public.outlook.general, so including
both of them is okay.
The more groups you add, the more likely your post is off-topic or will
irritate other posters due to your excessive cross-posting. Once you get 4,
or more, groups listed, it becomes very likely that they are UNRELATED
groups. My recollection of netiquette is that 4 groups, or more, is
considered excessive. It might be more than 4 groups but my experience
shows that when they reach 4 then one of the groups is unrelated to the
others (of course, not always true but a typical experience).
Out.