JdeBP> I've fixed it. Thank you.
MS> Your welcome. Good information on your pages.
JdeBP> Another Answer that I've been meaning to write
JdeBP> for quite a while involves not using "OT" in
JdeBP> subject lines. If a thread is off-topic, simply
JdeBP> move it to the newsgroup(s) where it is on-topic.
FS> That's not always a viable or/and the best solution.
It is the correct one. Your counterargument is founded upon what Bill
Cole calls the "selfish newsgroup meme": "It's on-topic here because
I'm interested and I'm here."
The fact that your counterargument is a paraphrase of Emily Postnews'
guide to netiquette should be a big red flag, too. ("[...] some
people might miss part of the valuable discussion in the fringe
groups." "Ignore those who suggest you should only use groups where
you think the article is highly appropriate." "If you do a followup,
be sure and keep the same subject, even if it's totally meaningless
and not part of the same discussion. If you don't, you won't catch
all the people who are looking for stuff on the original topic, and
that means less audience for you.")
FS> While forcing people to temporarily subscribe to the
FS> target group is already rather cumbersome, having
FS> to browse through all *other* (new) postings in the
FS> target group is even worse and knowing when to
FS> *un*subscribe is nearly impossible.
And thus the Selfish Newsgroup Poster inconveniences everyone else,
who are relying on the fact that (for example) to find miscellaneous
discussions about Usenet one subscribes to "news.misc" and to avoid
such discussions one does not, for the sake of xyr own personal
convenience of not having to subscribe to the newsgroups that actually
deal in the topic that xe is discussing and not using the
"References:" header to track the thread that xe was interested in.
There's no forcing people to subscribe to the group by moving off-
topic threads to the newsgroups where they are on-topic. That's a
mischaracterization. Indeed, it's exactly backwards. Not forcing
people is _why_ one should move an off-topic thread to where it is on
topic. The people who want to read about that topic will be
subscribed to that group. And the people who don't want to read about
that topic will not be. A newsgroup is not "a place where me and my
buddies hang out". That's another erroneous meme. A newsgroup is, to
quote USEFOR, "a single news forum [...] nominally intended for
articles on a specific topic". It's _not_ moving a thread to the
newsgroup where it is on-topic that forces people to do things,
because it forces people to abandon a basic aspect of Usenet in order
to find the discussions on the topic(s) that they are interested in.
Newsgroup subscriptions are the primary filters that people use to
select the topics that they want to read about from the daily GiBs of
Usenet traffic. The Selfish Newsgroup Poster inconveniences everyone
else, by not labelling xyr posts with the topical newsgroups and
forcing everyone else to scan _all_ newsgroups looking for "OT"
subject fields that _might_ signify threads that are about the topics
that they are interested in, simply for xyr own personal convenience.
Put another way: The Selfish Newsgroup Poster assumes that everyone is
searching Usenet by subject lines using Google Groups, and ignores
those who are using newsreaders.