Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple
forumsAn ', or message board, is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content...
,
mailing listA mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
s, or
newsgroupA usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s. This is distinct from multiposting, which involves posting multiple identical messages, each to a single forum, newsgroup, or topic area.
Crossposting can be helpful if the message is of interest to a larger
audienceAn audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
. However, crossposting to groups that are irrelevant to the message posted could be considered
spammingSpam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
.
Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple
forumsAn ', or message board, is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content...
,
mailing listA mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
s, or
newsgroupA usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s. This is distinct from multiposting, which involves posting multiple identical messages, each to a single forum, newsgroup, or topic area.
Crossposting can be helpful if the message is of interest to a larger
audienceAn audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
. However, crossposting to groups that are irrelevant to the message posted could be considered
spammingSpam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
. Moreover, excessive crossposting is generally considered bad form because it multiplies traffic without adding any new content. In the extreme case, if all messages were crossposted to every group, then every group would look exactly the same. A crossposter can minimize this problem by specifying that all responses be directed to a single group.
Crossposting in Usenet
In
UsenetUsenet, a portmanteau of "user" and "network" , is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name....
, the destination newsgroup(s) for a particular message is indicated in the "
Newsgroups:" line. Most commonly, just one newsgroup is specified. For example;
Newsgroups: sci.space
However it is possible to specify that the message is intended for more than one newsgroup.
Newsgroups: sci.space,comp.simulation
In this case, the message will be visible both in the
sci.space and
comp.simulation newsgroups. Despite appearing in two separate places, only one message has been posted. This has several advantages.
- A crossposted message takes up less server storage space, and creates less network traffic, than if individual messages had been posted to multiple newsgroups.
- Usenet reader software can intelligently track whether or not the user has already viewed the message in one newsgroup, even though they might currently be looking at another newsgroup. If multiple individual messages had been posted (i.e. the message's content was multiposted), each would appear to be a new unread message in each newsgroup.
- Replies to crossposted messages will be, by default, also crossposted, and so conversations can occur between readers of the multiple newsgroups without any confusion, so long as nobody "breaks the thread" by changing the groups they post their reply to. This enables readers of one of the newsgroups in the crosspost to provide corrections, etc. to information posted by somebody in a different newsgroup. By adding a "
Followup-To:" line a poster can indicate that answers to his post should be posted to another set of newsgroups than those listed by the "Newsgroups:" line.
- It avoids the fragmentation of replies which tends to occur with multiposted messages. It helps to avoid time wasted on writing a reply which has, in essence, been posted on another newsgroup but which the replier hasn't seen because he/she doesn't read that newsgroup or hasn't yet looked there.
Crossposting is usually practiced when material is relevant and of interest to the readers of more than one newsgroup. However sometimes it is used maliciously to begin a thread between newsgroups whose readers are likely to have violently differing opinions, in the hope of provoking a conflict. This is a form of
trollingIn Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional responseor of otherwise disrupting normal...
.
Crossposting to more than a small number of newsgroups is likely to be counterproductive. A commonly suggested limit is three newsgroups.
Some NNTP servers drop posts which are crossposted to more than a set number of newsgroups, especially if no "
Followup-To:" line exists.
Other meanings
A second meaning has evolved on some internet message boards. Crossposting (also known as x-posting) occurs when two persons post responses to the same message thread at almost the same time, often rendering the slightly later post irrelevant, funny, meaningless or inappropriate.
A third meaning involves posting the same material to two or more different blogs.
A fourth meaning refers to the newspaper industry wherein newspaper classified advertisements are cross-posted to different employment job boards specializing in niche markets. For example a newspaper may choose to offer its advertisers the opportunity to cross-post their employment advertisement to a specialty Hispanic job board like
Latpro.com or to a niche Healthcare site like
Hospitaljobsonline.com. The newspaper may work with a company like
Cross-Post LLC, the industry leader, which enables newspapers to seamlessly cross-post their classified advertisements to more than fifty niche job boards.
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