brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (05/12/89)
I believe article classification can have many newsgroup specific applications as well. Right now services like Genie, Bix, CIS, Delphi etc. all group their 'newsgroups' into 6-15 major classes and it works fairly well. If you're posting to rec.arts.sf-lovers, you might be asked to classify your article under major topics that spring up in that group from time to time. (These would be chosen by a 'group moderator' who does nothing but maintain this topic list.) Topics might include: Books Movies SF Related Science Authors Fandom & Conventions Reviews Robert Heinlein And if we didn't have special groups: Star Trek Doctor Who In fact, in the future we might not need special groups. No need to really split a group if you can easily add a classification. And it doesn't confuse the namespace. Anyway, Tim's & my new Postnews does all this, and a fair bit more. You can go further with group and hierarchy specific classification. We could also include poster classification, where the readers desire it. For example, you might, in soc.women, ask the sex of the poster, and give the three selections: M F N/A (It would not be fair to not present N/A as this is a politically touchy question.) In this case, the whole debate about 'wimminspace' etc. goes away -- it becomes a personal decision for the reader, and no policy decision, other than requesting that posters use the menus to classify their articles. Menus could also direct users. For example, "abortion" might appear on the soc.women menu. Selecting it would direct the user to talk.abortion. These examples for soc.women are given only because it's an example of recent vivid net debate -- they don't necessarily represent my opinions. They are given as examples of principles that could apply in any high volume group. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473