Garage door eye

If you MUST post the *same* question to MULTIPLE groups,

Crossposting can be helpful if the message is of interest to a larger audience.

Van Chocstraw wrote:

What you did was NOT *cross*-posting.

...and MULTI-posting is NEVER appropriate. Everyone who reads the question should be able to easily read ALL the responses--without having to track down all the groups where you splattered your query.

Cross-posting *without* setting up a "REPLY TO" NG in the message header is plain rude, and few cross-posters bother to do this.

UCLAN wrote:

I disagree. If a question appears in a group, ALL replies should also appear in *that* group. To read the answers, you shouldn't have to leave the group where you read the question.

This turkey doesn't even understand how to make that happen.

I can ask the same question in as many groups as I want. They are not all related and I can't know which one are related or which ones 'you all' visit. You complaint is bullshit.

Waiting for help by you is also bullshit.

You are a selfish prick who doesn't follow links.

Why anyone would take you seriously is beyond me.

I send my reply to the poster's email address, if available. As far as I'm concerned, my reply is specific to *his* problem, not 3 or 4 entire groups. No "REPLY TO" flag in a crosspost, no reply from me.

You have no idea what a "FOLLOW-UP" setting in a message header is, do you? *Not* using this feature is my complaint, not cross-posting in general. Wake up.

UCLAN wrote:

See "selfish", below.

If the question is not relavent to those groups, it shouldn't BE in those groups to start with.

You and I see Usenet in *very* different ways. Your view parallels the OP's.

OTOH, I see Usenet as a **community** where people can learn from other people's experiences--not as a I-don't-care-about-anyone-else-as-long-as-I-get-MY-problem-solved kind of place. In this context, I often use the word "selfish". In extreme cases, I include the word "prick": news: snipped-for-privacy@s9g2000prg.googlegroups.com

...and you don't appear to make a distinction between MULTI-posting and cross-posting.

Quite the opposite, really. I am against cross-posting and multi- posting.

I make a very clear distinction: With cross-posting, the same lame thread appears on three or four or more newsgroups. With multi-posting, this does not occur. The best scenario is a cross-posted message using the "Follow-Up To" provision. That's why it is there, but it seems the OE crowd hasn't found it yet.

Followup-to is a nuisance. You end up replying to a post and having it go to an unexpected group. This is why I've set up my newsreader to delete all posts using the followup-to header so I don't even see them.

You must learn to actually *look at* the TO/NEWSGROUP section of the header before you send the message.

Which is why the first line of the body should always clearly state

It would be worth your time to modify the filter to highlite the posts that Followup to groups you are active in instead of deleting them.

Trolls & vandals misuse followups to flood other groups, but that's no reason for those of us with a clue to avoid them.

I used to highlight them so I could fill them in and/or killfile them, but I lost interest and just delete them.

I've yet to hear of a useful reason for followupping.