welsch@houxu.UUCP (Larry Welsch) (01/20/85)
This article addresses the problem of the quantity of messages that come across my screen in many of the news groups. I can still remember the days when I could read every single article posted on the net and a map fit on my administrator's door. Those days will never return, on the other hand it would appear that as the net increases in size, the shear number of articles will grow, until it is impossible to read any of the news groups. Consider hitting the infamous "n" key for four hours everyday to get through net.politics. How much can anyone say anyway about libertarianism or Heinlein's Starship Troopers? Yet, there is something distinctly "American" about the freedom of speech that the net provides. It provides a soap box for anyone to say almost anything on any topic. Where else can you call someone a "#6$^%$$#%$#" and have potentially thousands of people see it? Where else can one engage in unfettered debate before such a large audience, and despite all the grammatical and spelling errors, a relatively bright audience? Yet it is precisely this "freedom" which creates the problem of the quantity. Two opposing forces. What I propose is compromise; to have one's "cake" and eat it too. I don't want to give up the freedom but I do want to reduce the quantity. One solution is to have only regional distribution of all high quantity highly repetitious news groups. And net wide distribution of moderated news groups. Distribution could be accomplished by whatever means was appropriate to the nature of the groups. These are very real problems. Without some type of solution, the net will very quickly reach a limit, some super region. I personally would like to see the net continue to grow, and that growth requires changes in the way we do things. As I said at the beginning; those days of being able to read all newgroups at the beginning of every day are gone. So too will pass the time when anybody can say anything and have the whole net see it. The only question is what will replace it? Larry Welsch houxu!welsch