From: spencer@der.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun)
Subject: starting new threads
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu (S. Spencer Sun)
Organization: Live Organ Transplants
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 08:18:41 GMT

In light of the recent articles about cross-posting, I thought I'd address
the issue of correctly starting new threads.  A lot of people will do this
by simply finding some random article and doing a "followup" to it, then
changing the subject line, etc.

There are two main reasons why I think this is a bad idea.  (Judging from
the warm reception I got the last time I did something like this, I should
probably preface this by saying that I am not trying to coerce people into
doing whatever makes me happy.  I happen to think that the two reasons
below are quite valid, not just personal peeves, and it doesn't take a lot
of effort to start a new thread correctly.)

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T START A NEW THREAD BY JUST FOLLOWING UP TO AN EXISTING
ARTICLE:

(1) YOUR ARTICLE MAY NOT BE POSTED TO THE NEWSGROUPS THAT YOU EXPECTED.

If the article to which you are following up ("up to which you are
following"? :-) ) is cross-posted to multiple newsgroups, your article
will be too!  This happened recently; someone posted an article about
something they found in _Science News_, and they did this by following up
to an article in the thread about whether or not we should split
soc.motss.  Since the latter discussion was cross-posted to news.groups,
the _Science News_ thing got posted to news.groups as well, where it
probably doesn't really belong.

Also, if people have set the Followup-To: line in the header of their
article, then your followup will of course go to whatever newsgroups they
specified, which may not even include the newsgroup to which you think you
are posting.

(2) YOUR ARTICLE WILL BE THREADED INCORRECTLY.

(I will talk about trn, because that's the only threaded newsreader with
which I am familiar, but similar situations apply for other threader
newsreaders, I'm sure.)

Trn groups related articles into threads.  When you followup to an
existing article, your article's header includes a References: line that
contains the Message-ID of the parent article, and this References: line
is what trn uses to decide whether articles are in the same thread or
not.  While you are in fact starting a new thread, trn will think you
aren't, so it will group your new article with the other one.

Now, trn requires the user to select entire threads of articles to be
read.  If there is a group of articles with subject A, and you start a new
thread of subject B (completely unerlated to A), people using trn will
have to select one group of articles containing BOTH subjects, even though
they may only want to read one of them.

If you're still reading this and haven't reached for the flamethrower, and
you want to know how to properly start a new thread, here's how you start
a new thread correctly from within rn or trn (those are the only two
newsreaders I've used... from the tin flame war on news.software.readers I
gather Tim Pierce is our resident tin guru... anyone use nn or something
else?).

Hit $.  This will take you to the end of the newsgroup.  _Now_ if you
type 'f', it will start a new thread.  In trn, if you hit 'f' and you
aren't at the end of the newsgroup, it will ask you if you are starting
a separate topic.  Answering 'y' here works equally well as hitting $
then f.

If you accidentally start to followup to an article, when you really want
to start a new thread, and you don't feel like quitting out and starting
over again, there's a way around it.  Delete the References:  and also
make sure that the Newsgroups: line reflects the news group(s) to which
you want to post.

-----
sss/PU'94 Dept of CS (spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu)/JvNCnet (spencer@jvnc.net)
"Mahwage.  Mahwage, is what bwings us, too-gethah, too-dahy."