From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Oct 06 2001 - 13:42:37 CDT
On Tue Oct 02 2001 - 14:05:06 CDT
Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com) said...
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 10:44:26AM +0000, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> > In <20011001123116.F22285@main.templetons.com> Brad Templeton
<brad@templetons.com> writes:
> >
> > >Huh? The whole purpose of a control message is exactly what you describe.
> > >A message, for the system, not visible to users but associated with
> > >particular newsgroups. Why would it be done any other way?
> >
> > Actually, I can see some benefit in having these messages visible in the
> > groups affected, so people are aware of what is going on around them. But
> > there needs to be some simple means to avoid seeing them if you (or your
> > site) doesn't want to.
> But that makes all the users of old readers forced to read them or
> killfile them.
So?
> And since bulk cancels don't as readily show up in
> a specific group (commonly they would be massively crossposted) it would
> be a horrendous mess.
They will show up in exactly the groups to which the original messages
were posted (and I am supposing that all the cancels in one bulk
message will refer to the same spam/spew; so that will be just those
groups that were affected). You will see them in the first of those
groups that you are subscribed to.
> If you want to read them, just write a newsreader that scans the "control"
> group for messages posted to a group you want to see them in, don't make
> everybody else have to modify their newsreader.
Have you ever tried "scanning the control group" over a modem running at
28800bauds? That is the whole problem. Articles that NNTP doesn't send
you "because you are not supposed to be interested in them" are in fact
extremely hard to get if you decide that you DO want them. This makes it
difficult to get hold of control messages in a suck feed (but there are
few enough of them that you can afford to take them all; but noway can
one at present obtain cancels over a suck feed).
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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