Daave said:
How exactly does Follow-Up work? I looked at OP's headers and noticed
Follow-Up. Why it used? How? I wasn't able to tell which news reader was
used, either.
If your newsreader doesn't alert you (and Outlook Express will not) then
you need to notice the Newsgroups header of the article that you read
versus the Newsgroups header in your reply. If they are different, a
FollowUp-To header was probably used. This means when you reply, the
poster is deliberately trying to redirect your reply to only one or some
of the original newsgroups or even to a completely different newsgroup
(spammers and malcontents love to try using FollowUp-To to redirect
negative replies to, say, alt.test). If you look at the headers of a
post and see a FollowUp-To, that post's author is trying to send replies
somewhere not expected. Usenet etiquette dictates that if you change
the Newsgroups header in your reply or you use the FollowUp-To header
that you announce it at the start of your reply so respondents know what
you did or are trying to do.
In Outlook Express and while composing a post, use the View -> All
Headers menu to show the FollowUp-To field. The FollowUp-To header is
usually not included in the overview headers when your newsreader polls
for a list of new messages on the NNTP server, so you cannot define a
rule that will delete or colorize any that use the FollowUp-To header.
However, in some newsreaders, you can still define a filter or score
value to posts when you yank them in full because all headers will then
be included. So my program can color them in the message list to notify
me that the poster used the FollowUp-To header when I pull their message
in full. I can also configure which headers, when present, will appear
in the header pane above the preview window showing the body of their
post. So if I add FollowUp-To as a header to display (and make it
bolded and colored) then I also see it there. OE can't do any of that.
At best, you can try to use the NewsProxy (aka nFilter) on your host
through which you yank newsgroups and have it drop or tag posts that use
the FollowUp-To header and use a rule in OE to look for the tag (if you
chose not to drop the post) but, again, that would only work if the NNTP
server to which you connect happens to include the FollowUp-To header in
the set of overview headers, and few NNTP server include it. OE can't
test on but a few headers, and FollowUp-To is not one of them so using
NewsProxy to add a tag is how you would get OE to exercise a rule on
them. You'd think that if you set OE to sync by yanking the whole
message instead of just headers that you would then have the tag added
by NewsProxy but OE doesn't update the headers that it already got from
a prior message poll that included the Subject, From, and other headers
for that post.
Because of nym-shifters, mail2news cowards, kooks, children (regardless
of age), and especially due to spam, I had to eventually give up using
OE (even with NewsProxy). I had trialed several newsreaders in several
tests over the last few years but they all had defects that I wouldn't
tolerate or would not meet my one critical criteria that I can sort
watched threads to the top of the message list. Obviously if I mark
them to be watched then I really do want to watch them without having to
scroll through dozens or hundreds of other posts to get to them, or
having to use some convoluted workaround. I had include 40tude Dialog
in those prior trials but canned it because of this deficiency. Decent
multi-column sorting is missing in many newsreaders. It was only
because I gave Dialog a lot more of a chance and spent 4 nights working
on scripts to get it to work at about 98% of what I demanded that I then
chose to stick with it.
Is it ever appropriate to use Follow-Up? How does one undo Follow-Up
(which I presume you did)?
No, I *ignored* the attempt to use FollowUp-To for a post sent to 4
groups that tried to send replies to just 1 of them. That means I made
the Newsgroups header in my post the same as the Newsgroups header in
the original poster's message; i.e., my replies went to the same groups
that the poster decided to submit their message. The original poster
claims those groups are all related to his topic (and I only remove them
if it is obvious that they are not) but is then rude in yanking away the
replies so the discussion disappears to a different group than where the
user read it. Below is my rant on the very poor usage of FollowUp-To
that is rampant because users are recommended to use it on some sites
but don't think it through using some logic.
--- Rant on inappropriate use of the FollowUp-To header ---
Don't use the FollowUp-To header. Posting to, say, 3 newsgroups but
moving replies to just 1 of them or to a completely different one means
you disconnect the visitors of those other 2 (or 3) newsgroups from the
rest of the discussion. If a newsgroup is appropriate for your post
then it is also appropriate for the replies. Or, converserly, if the
continued discussion of your post is not appropriate in all the
newsgroups to which you cross-posted then you should not have posted to
those other newsgroups in the first place. You are using the
FollowUp-To header to move replies to YOUR "home" newsgroup but which
the users of the other newsgroups may not visit. After all, if you
cross-post and include your "home" newsgroup then you'll see all those
replies in your home newsgroup and meanwhile all the other users can
still see the replies in their newsgroup where you decided to also
publish your post.
In
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/primer/part1/, it says, "For a
cross-post, you may want to set the Followup-To: header line to the most
suitable group for the rest of the discussion". Read another way, that
means you disconnect the discussion from all the visitors of the other
newsgroups to which you decided to publish your post. Why did you
publish to those other newsgroups if you are going to yank the
discussion away from those users and perhaps even from the respondents
you were attempting to elicit? It is exasperating to post a reply and
never see it in the newsgroup where you read the original post. If your
post was appropriate for all the groups to which you cross-posted then
why wouldn't those same groups be appropriate for the replies? To yank
away the discussion to your "home" group is rude since that is probably
not the "home" group for your respondents. You wanted replies which may
require further replies but now your respondents no longer see the
thread in the newsgroup that they visit to where you published your
post. Also, the respondents may not know if their reply is appropriate
in the "home" group that you happen to choose. In general, malcontents
and spammers use the FollowUp-To header to hide negative replies to
their flame or spam posts, often sending the replies off to a *.test
newsgroup.
There are some cases where FollowUp-To should be used. For example, say
a newsgroup is supposed to only get used for citing the content of a
spam e-mail. Discussions about that spam are not supposed to be
published in that citing newsgroup. Just the exhibits are published
there. If someone wants to discuss that particular spam, their replies
should go into a different newsgroup meant for those discussions. I
believe that is how some of the NANAE newsgroups operate but the
principle may apply elsewhere but it is rare few newsgroups where
FollowUp-To is appropriate. For the vast majority of newsgroups,
FollowUp-To is *not* appropriate. If you do not want continue the
discussion in the other newsgroups then don't cross-post over there (and
then use FollowUp-To to yank away the continued discussion). If the
discussion is not appropriate in those other newsgroups then it seems
you have nominated your post to be spam.
If you do use the FollowUp-To header, you are expected per netiquette to
alert the readers of your post that you used that header. Be polite and
add a note (at the start of your post) saying that you used the header
(ex., "WARNING: FollowUp-To was used and points to <newsgroup>". You
might also want to explain why any further discussion in the other
newsgroups is inappropriate despite your rudeness in posting to those
other newsgroups. Many times respondents wonder where their reply post
went because they expect to see it in the group they visited and where
they read your post. Not all NNTP clients alert the user that the
poster used the FollowUp-To header. Think about it: you post to
multiple newsgroups but yank the replies to a different newsgroup than
where your respondents visited, then you need more help and reply to
those replies but which are now only in your "home" newsgroup, but the
respondents won't see their posts nor will they see your replies to them
asking for more help. FollowUp-To is not required when you cross-post
since your "home" newsgroup should be one those that were specified in
the list of newsgroups. You'll watch the discussion in your home
newsgroup and the respondents or lurkers can watch that same discussion
in their own newsgroup. If you don't want replies to show up in all the
newsgroups to which you cross-posted then don't cross-post over there in
the first place!
When crossposting, there are not multiple copies of your post that
wastes bandwidth for each to get them propagated to other NNTP servers
and there aren't multiple copies of your post consuming disk space. A
single copy gets sent to the other NNTP servers and a single copy
resides on each NNTP server with pointers to it to make it show up in
multiple newsgroups. You aren't saving bandwidth or disk space by
redirecting replies for a cross-posted message to a single newsgroup.
You are just being rude to the visitors of the other newsgroups to which
you cross-posted but tried to yank away the discussion.
--- End of rant ---
If you choose to continue this subthread which has become off-topic to
these newsgroups, I'll probably use FollowUp-To myself - but with notice
- to move it to news.software.readers where it is on-topic. I doubt the
hardware folks really want to debate over the pros and cons of various
newsreaders or over Usenet etiquette.
