Copyright © 1990-2005 by Prof. Timo Salmi
Last modified Sat 5-Nov-2005 19:35:05
|
|
Copyright © 1990-2005 by Prof. Timo Salmi Last modified Sat 5-Nov-2005 19:35:05 |
|
If you look at the header of a Usenet news posting, you'll observe
that it includes the a line "Distribution:" where you might put a
limited area code like usa, na (North America), local etc. Don't
trust this. The distribution limitation is not guaranteed to work.
In global newsgroups a local distribution can easily "leak" since
not all configurations along the feed observe this feature. Thus the
distribution field in the header is best left unchanged. The best
advice is always assume that the newsgroups default will take
precedence. In practice that means a "world" distribution in news
hierarchies like news.* and comp.*. The New users' newsgroup news.newusers.questions
is a good case in point. Always assume world distribution. Hence the
frequent question where to find the different distribution codes is
somewhat moot.Consequently, when you write to the international Usenet newsgroups, don't make comments which might make you appear as xenophobic or ignorant like "this is the United States, right" believing that no one outside will see your posting.
Kent Landfield wrote on this in is own FAQ (reprinted with permission): In theory the distributions work as intended, but in practice, due to lack of verification by posting agents, misconfigured news transport agents, wide-area sites which pick up all news regardless of distribution, and inadequate controls on the names of the distributions, they are relatively useless.
