On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:28:24 -0500, Tony Cooper
wrote:
On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:45:53 -0500, Talker wrote:
Hi there Hunt. Just a quick note, but cross-posting violates most ISPs terms of service (TOS). I see numerous people doing it in the Photoshop groups and am surprised that they haven’t been notified by their ISP.
Since when? My ISP – Earthlink – doesn’t say squat about newsgroup protocol. I doubt if any ISP does. Protocol is usually suggested in the individual newsgroup FAQ. The point above about cross-posting in appropriate groups so all may share the responses is perfectly acceptable and makes much more sense that individual identical posts.
Offensive cross-posting is usually the result of trolling where none of the newsgroups involved are appropriate to the topic.
I checked at Earthlink, and you’re right… they state:
"EarthLink considers "multiposting" to 10 or more groups within a two week sliding window to be excessive. EarthLink servers currently limit the number of allowable "cross-posts" to 9."
When I was with Earthlink, their newsgroup provider was Giganews. Their TOS says:
" Crossposting
A few binary newsgroups, such as certain music groups, encourage posting to more than one group at the same time, as long as the content is appropriate to each newsgroup. The majority of binary groups and almost all text groups, however, discourage any form of crossposting. Please consider that a thread in a text group may begin as appropriate to two newsgroups, but followups may soon become "off topic" in one of the groups."
The groups I usually hang in are very strict about crossposting, and they would often cite an individual’s ISP’s policy on crossposting. It’s been years since I have checked on various policies, so I guess they have changed .
The reason crossposting is frowned upon in my other groups relates to the last sentence of Giganews policy. Answering a question that’s been posted to a bunch of groups promotes
"noise"…..unnecessary posts that cause other posts to be dropped. I can see where this isn’t a problem here since I see posts that go back to June of 2003.
My bad, sorry about my mistaken information.
Talker