cshenk wrote:

"Cat Guy" wrote:
Is there a reason why you're removing some of the groups I'm
cross-posting to?

Yes, it's considered bad to crosspost like that.

Wrong.

I've been posting to usenet since 1988.

I know what usenet is, and how it should be used.

It IS NOT "bad" to crosspost when the groups being posted to have
something in common with the subject matter being discussed.

It's even more correct to crosspost when the groups in question
discuss essentially THE SAME subject matter.

There is no difference in the content, charter or subject material of
these groups:

alt.pets.cats
alt.cats
rec.pets.cats.health+behav

But the fact that some people may read rec.pets.cats.health+behav but
not alt.pets.cats means that if I want my post to reach a wide
audience, I have no choice but to cross-post the those groups BECAUSE
THEY EXIST. There are other cat-related usenet groups, but I did not
cross-post to those because they have relatively low traffic.

Cross-posting is bad only when the content of a post does not pertain
to what is normally discussed in the group being cross-posted to.

For example, you could correctly criticize me if I cross-posted my
original message to:

rec.pets.cats.health+behav
alt.home.repair
comp.sys.intel

But that is not what I did.

Usenet today has thousands of newsgroups. It was anticipated that
some discussions could span the interests of several groups
simultaneously, hence the cross-posting mechanism was an early and
itegral part of the usenet messaging system. And cross-posting is
efficient. It allows a thread to grow and allows everyone who reads
it to participate so long as the cross-posting is maintained.

The issue in this case is not that I cross-posted a message regarding
cat health and behavior to 3 different cat-centric newsgroups.

The issue is - why are there 3 different (and active) cat-centric
newsgroups?

Granted you were looking for a 'wider audience' but many spam
filters will delete your messages unseen if there is more than
one group in there.

Only those that are ignorant in how usenet works would deploy such a
rule in their news-reading agent - especially if they set the limit to
1. A rejection based on a cross-post to more than 5 groups is more
realistic and understandible. But not 1.

A more efficient way to deal with off-topic or junk posts (which tend
to be crazily cross-posted) is to simply kill-file the posters who
exhibit that behavior.