Charles Sullivan wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:15:46 -0700, Paul Lutus wrote:
>
>> Charles Sullivan wrote:
>>
>> / ...
>> [ Paul ]
>>
>>>> Don't cross-post.
>>>
>>> The only reason I've heard for not (moderate) cross-posting
>>> is the persistence of some antique news-server and/or client
>>> software than doesn't efficiently handle cross-posts.
>>> If you have a more compelling reason I'd appreciate
>>> hearing it.
>>
>> I tried to reply, but the newsgroup you set for follow-up does not exist
>> on my news service. This may seem like a purely personal complaint, but
>> what it means in practice is that cross-posters miss a lot of replies,
>> because some newsreaders don't alert the user that the post failed.
>>
>> The only reason you saw my reply is after the post failure I hand-edited
>> your message header to delete the non-group and replace it with a real
>> one.
>
> Hmmm... I hadn't set a 'followup-to' header. The original query
> was cross-posted to comp.os.linux.redhat and comp.os.linux.setup,
> in that order (both of which I monitor for replies). Does your
> newsreader (KNode???) perhaps automatically set 'followup-to' to
> the first in the list?

In the event that no follow-up is set, KNode cross-posts its reply rather
than making a choice, so somehow a follow-up was set outside KNode.

> My newsreader, PAN, asks whether I want to 'send anyway?' if one or
> more newsgroups in a cross-posted list do not exist on the
> (RoadRunner) news server.

All this argues against cross-posting, along with the more conventional idea
that one should choose the best newsgroup for the post.

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com