From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com)
Date: Wed Aug 08 2001 - 15:29:30 CDT
chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) wrote:
> In <200108072137.RAA29455@darkstar.prodigy.com> davidsen@prodigy.com (Bill Davidsen) writes:
> >Moving it so that the Newsgroups line doesn't match the group will cause
> >followups to go to the old group. If you move at all you need to change
> >stuff and use the same cautions as any other REPOST, because that's the
> >closest existing model I can identify.
>
> No, I don't think so. Assuming there is no Followup-To header, a
> newsreader will direct all followups to whatever was in the Newsgroups
> header. It will take no notice at all of what group it thought it was
> reading at the time, or of what was in any Xref header (posting of
> completely new articles is a different matter, of course).
>
> Surely, noone is suggesting that the Newsgroups header be altered? That
> would be totally contrary to the fundamental "dont't tinker after
> injection" policy that permeates our whole draft.
>
> So followups in existing threads will tend to get posted to oldgroup,
> except insofar as participants correct them manually. That is why it is so
> desirable that servers should nevertheless make them appear in newgroup,
> by the use of the aliasing mechanism or otherwise. The users of such
> servers should hardly notice any difference.
The idea is to make the old group go away! By leaving the old Newsgroups
line and having followups go to the old group, I have a choice of
several bad things. I stop accepting post in the old group, in which
case my users can't post and complain, or they post and I put it in the
old group which then never goes away, or they post and I have to rewrite
it to the new group in which case readers in the old group don't see and
my users complain.
There is NO way to make this invisible. At least by flat out refusing
posts to (only) that old group I can eventually train my users, until
management tells me to make it work because the users are complaining
and going to ISP {whatever} because they still have the group.
It won't work and it can't work, for reasons political rather than
technical. mvgroup is a waste of time because only sites immune to user
pressure can afford to do the right thing if the users like it or not.
-- bill davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com) Prodigy Internet Server Group Project Leader, USENET news 914-448-1241