in message
<snip>
<Not related to your question but instead to how you posted>
NOTE: FollowUp-To header was ignored. Original list of newsgroups was
used for this reply.
Don't use the FollowUp-To header. Posting to, say, 5 newsgroups but
moving replies to just 1 of them or to a completely different one
means you disconnect the visitors of those other 4 (or 5) newsgroups
from the rest of the discussion. If a newsgroup is appropriate for
your post then it is also appropriate for the replies. You are using
the FollowUp-To header to move replies to YOUR "home" newsgroup but
which the users of the other newsgroups may not visit. After all, if
you cross-post and include your "home" newsgroup then you'll see all
those replies in your home newsgroup and meanwhile all the other users
can still see the replies in their newsgroup where you decided to also
publish your post.
In
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/primer/part1/, it says, "For a
cross-post, you may want to set the Followup-To: header line to the
most suitable group for the rest of the discussion". Read another
way, that means you disconnect the discussion from all the visitors of
the other newsgroups to which you decided to publish your post. Why
did you publish to those other newsgroups if you are going to yank the
discussion away from those users and perhaps even from the
respondents? If your post was appropriate for all the groups to which
you cross-posted then why wouldn't those same groups be appropriate
for the replies? To yank away the discussion to your "home" group is
rude since that is probably not the "home" group for your respondents.
You wanted replies which may require further replies but now your
respondents no longer see the thread in the newsgroup that they visit
to where you published your post. Also, the respondents may not know
if their reply is appropriate in the "home" group that you happen to
choose. In general, malcontents and spammers use the FollowUp-To
header to hide negative replies to their flame/spam posts, like
sending the replies off to a *.test newsgroup.
There are some cases where FollowUp-To should be used. For example,
say a newsgroup is supposed to only get used to citing the content of
a spam e-mail. Discussions about that spam are not supposed to be
published in that newsgroup. Just the exhibits are published there.
If someone wants to discuss that particular spam, their replies should
go into a different newsgroup meant for those discussions. I believe
that is how some of the NANAE newsgroups operate but the principle
applies elsewhere. That is not the case with your post.
If you do use the FollowUp-To header, you are expected per netiquette
to alert the readers of your post that you used that header. Be
polite and add a note (at the start of your post) saying that you used
the header (ex., "Note: FollowUp-To used and points to <group>". Many
times respondents wonder where the hell their reply post went because
they expect to see it in the group they visited when they read your
post. Not all NNTP clients alert the user that the poster used the
FollowUp-To header. Think about it: you post to multiple newsgroups
but yank the replies to a different newsgroup than where your
respondents visited, then you need more help and reply to those
replies but which are now only in your "home" newsgroup, but the
respondents won't see their posts nor will they see your replies to
them asking for more help. FollowUp-To is not required when you
cross-post since your "home" newsgroup should be one those that were
specified in the list of newsgroups. You'll see watch the discussion
in your newsgroup and the respondents or lurkers can watch the same
discussion in their newsgroup. If you don't want replies to show up
in all the newsgroups to which you cross-post then don't cross-post
over there.
When crossposting, there are not multiple copies of your posting
wasting bandwidth for each to get them propagated to other NNTP
servers and there aren't multiple copies of your post consuming disk
space. A single copy gets sent to the other NNTP servers and a single
copy resides on each NNTP server with pointers to it to make it show
up in multiple newsgroups. You aren't saving bandwidth or disk space
by redirecting replies for a cross-posted message to a single
newsgroup.
