Dave's Daily Dose

Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ...
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a
big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin. If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to
soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
                -- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_