mel (06/13/82)
Isn't it about time to institutionalize Usenet ? The latest blather about where to peek to get a user's name, and the flood of misuse (stupid postings to inappropriate groups, posting to multiple groups, multiple postings of the same article, etc.) still shows the amateur nature of the net software. Usenet has become one of the most used features offered by the current systems, and is a major source of administrative headaches. The UNIX users like Usenet and interact with it heavily. It has the potential to become a major influence on how we interact with others in doing our jobs. The benefit of spending a half hour or so with the net each day can far offset that cost, if only the net were easier to use in a way to make that time worthwhile. My wish list for versions >2.7 include: 1) Interactive tools for the administration of Usenet. The continual need to re-compile sources and munge around the file system is taking too much administrative time and creating real messes in the large sub- nets. Decide what a Usenet administrator should be doing, and provide commands to best do those things. 2) Enforce some rules. Don't let an article leave to more than one news- group. Don't allow multiple posting of the same article. Don't allow a user's mistype or whim create a new newsgroup. Enforce these rules at the source and at each passthrough. Give commands for the site administrator to control what goes on at the site (I don't mean just censorship -- don't re-flame on that subject). Automatically sign each article (put the signature in the .newsrc, let each site administrator decide how it gets there, don't tie the net to the rest of UNIX). 3) Put some tutorial capability into the net itself for the new users. Why should each administrator or site counselor have to repeat the same stuff over and over, when a semi-permanent set of articles could be used ? 4) Put some real thought into the commands and options and presentations and order of presentation. I personally think the Berkeley msg format is a real crock, and am not sure the -c option is right either. Remember, we are dealing with hundreds of man-hours a day here, lets not waste it. For a start, how about letting ME decide the order that newsgroups are presented to ME, and the site administrator decide the default ? For sure put in a working pager oriented to readnews. Try to get Usenet into the rest of the world. Sell it to USG and the systems still unconnected. Interconnect it with the other nets, either by direct gates or digest exchange. Write Usenet software for other systems (VMS, Tops-20, ITS, Tenex, VM/CMS, CP/M, TSO). Find an archive site for net.sources and other long-term articles (how about access to the CP/M archive at MIT-MC ?). Individual sub-nets and sites should really use the local groups to advantage. Usenet is a new and unique technology, lets help it mature and spread. Mel Haas , houxm!mel
bstempleton (06/14/82)
I certainly agree that the USENET software has to change quite a bit too, but here's what I see as good ideas: 1) Abandon the 'newsgroup' concept. Let people post and allow them to put keywords in the article rather than a newsgroup name. Keep a database of known keywords that people are using, and let the users see it. Along with the keyword, keep things like usage counts and last usage dates, to see if things are dead. Use the Notesfile system of associating initiation messages and replies together so you see them all at once or quickly skip a whole session. Right now there are too many topics of interest and it is a real pain to have discussion on should we have a group called xxx or what should the name be. Let the computer worry. When a new keyword is introduced, not found in the database, add it. Post a message with the keyword 'new_keyword' associated with it, and since most people will put this keyword in their interest list, they will see what is going on. 2) Keep distribution seperate from keywords. For example, I might give keywords "movie", "star trek" for a review of the new Star Trek flick, and I might want to specify a distribution of "net", "ontario", "waterloo" or "local" as I please. Right now we have the newsgroup names and their distributions all mixed up together. They don't belong that way. 3) Naturally, allow fancy (regular expression) pattern matching on the keywords. this way if somebody uses 'suicides' instead of 'suicide', the intelligently set keyword of "suicide.*" will catch them all. 4) In the future allow for automatic distribution of messages to subsets of the net. I might be interested in "Ikonas" frame buffers, and I might want to send messages of "net" wide distribution, but I suspect that a lot of sites won't want it. Allow the setup of an automatic subscriber system. I see the keyword 'Ikonas' is active but I note my site doesn't get it. I send a 'subscribe' message out on the net until I find a site that does get it, and that site then forwards to mine. Automatic subnets with minimal overhead. 5) Perhaps allow moderators in some way. As usenet grows, many sites will not be able to afford the DDD/machine/modem costs to support the whole net. They will only want a portion. Simple designations like net. and pers. will not be enough - they may insist on getting only moderated stuff, so that junk is weeded out. Allow simple implementation of this. 6) Use data compresssion to reduce phone costs on machines where cpu is cheap. (You can do this now, using 'compact' and 'ccat' as filters for your news items if you have bsd. They provide reasonable compression at the cost of CPU, but if you run at night, that is not too bad. It means saving a BUNDLE in long distance) Have huffman compression that knows a dictionary of the 1000 most common usenet words (garnered from /usr/spool/news say) and also knows how to compress common site names, keywords and header descriptors. SAVE MONEY and keep the usenet alive longer These are not Pipe dreams. They are something for 'C' news perhaps. I hope they come eventually, if somebody has the time to code them.
Physics:crl (06/14/82)
Personally, I think the newsgroup concept is fine and dandy, and would NOT want to see 10 zillion keywords scattered about the news. Charles LaBrec Purdue Univ.
jqw (06/15/82)
For every thing, flame, flame, flame There is a newsgroup, flame, flame, flame ... When there are more flames than other articles (as in many newsgroups now), there is definitely a need for a change. The keyword idea may or may not work, but something different should be tried. The newsgroup idea DOESN'T work. John Q. Walker
goutal (09/22/82)
Ref: Article 128
About flames...
Most of the flames I've seen have included a "flame on ... flame off"
notice. Seems to me that a flame keyword could be among the most common.
Meantime, hubbout we institute a set of xxx.flame subgroups for most
groups.
I think newsgroups DO work, to some extent.
They are much more interactive or responsive or whatever than 'digests'.
Note the quotes, by the way -- most of the so-called digests on the
ARPAnet are not generally digested, and only moderately moderated.
This is not to say that digests are dumb -- they're not --
they are a very useful tool.
Consider the following spectrum of newsy things:
1. KEYWORD NEWS
Completely arbitrary, very dynamic, topics grow and die,
extremely responsive, lots of junk, requires some librarian
skills to make any sense of the results
2. NEWSGROUPS
(like we have now) very responsive, very junky with no way to
weed out the junk -- i.e. very responsive in terms of being
able to POST news, but not very resonsive to the need to select
just what you want to read
3. NOTESFILES
Mostly like newsgroups, except that chronology makes more sense,
easier to ignore whole subdiscussions stemming from original notes
4. MODERATED NEWS
This appears to be like notesfiles, except that the editing is
done by a human instead of mechanically by some chronology or
whatever. But the idea is that the moderator merely packages
the articles so they can be read more sensibly, and can do things
like strongly suggest that things are getting beyond the scope
of the group.
5. DIGESTS
Here I mean something other than the ARPAnet thingies --
those are closer to what I call "moderated news". The moderator
of a true digest is more like a newspaper editor. It is assumed
that the moderator has the power to not repost (riposte?) articles
according to his or her interpretation of some previously laid-down
guidelines, in the interests of making the result more compact.
In particular, the moderator is responsible for collecting multiple
replies to specific questions, and posting the results as a single
article.
Note the spread from the anarchic to the monarchic.
Note also that as anarchy goes up, the user must exert more effort
to get useful information out of the system.
Note MOSTLY that they are ALL useful!
Oh, well, food for thought.
-- Kenn (decvax!)goutal