>Is there a problem then with cross posting news groups - no more so
>that asking Librarians to report on which "foreigners" read what books.
 
    The Usenet attitude  is best explained by the  general reaction to
JJ's mail.  JJ's two sins, according to most flamers, were:
 
    1) Posting  outside the  topic of  the newsgroup.   Panhandling in
         "comp.sys.ibmpc" isn't germane to the  topic of the group.  A
         group actually exists for things  that fall outside all other
         groups: "misc.misc".
 
    2) Posting the same message to many newsgroups, instead of posting
         a single  message to  multiple groups.  To  the un-initiated,
         these two choices sound alike, but they aren't.  All messages
         are required to have a unique message-id attached to them (in
         the "Message-id:" header), and most newsreading programs will
         only present  a message to  you once, regardless of  how many
         groups it was posted to.   JJ posted a separate message, with
         a different message-id,  to each group.  The  result was that
         you actually saw the message umpteen-zillion times.  That is,
         unless JJ made  it into your "kill file" after  the first few
         ;-) .
 
Ross Patterson
Rutgers University
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