brad@looking.UUCP (11/29/87)
I just had an interesting thought for future versions of news. People in the past have suggested that followups shouldn't be done until after all the news in a group is read. Here's a further suggestion. Change inews so that it rejects any local poster who is: a) in rn, readnews, vnews or any other news reading program b) accessed his .newsrc file within say, the last half hour. That way you really have to think about a followup. Any followup that you would "forget to post" under these restrictions wasn't worth posting by my definitions. Anybody who really felt they had something to say would still get to say it -- nobody would be censored. People who wanted to include text could still do it, but they would have to work at it. Of course, mail replies would suffer no restriction! Those in the heat of passion would be much more predisposed to mail than posting. I suppose that there are some truly useful immediate followups -- certain types of direct responses, etc. We could include a "deliberate bypass" feature that would allow people to post some things immediately, but their articles would be heavily flagged with indicators saying how the article was posted, and people who abused this would show up in kill and fascist files fairly quickly. It would also stop the "try rn every 10 minutes to see if there's anything new" folks. For you folks, "GET A LIFE!!!" as Bill Shatner would say. You make call this drastic, but people are leaving the net in great numbers these days. Almost as fast as people are joining. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
webber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP (11/30/87)
In article <1173@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: > I just had an interesting thought for future versions of news. > ... > Change inews so that it rejects any local poster who is: > a) in rn, readnews, vnews or any other news reading program > b) accessed his .newsrc file within say, the last half hour. Well, let's see, should I: 1) pop to another machine where my .newsrc hasn't been touched in months 2) make my own version of the newsreader that doesn't use .newsrc (thus also avoiding the prying eyes of net statistics gatherers). 3) write a shell script that saves up my replies and then posts them at 10 a.m. (or some equally outlandish hour). 4) mv my .newsrc file away and replace it with an older file. Hmmm. I'll have to think about it for another half sec or so. > ... > You make call this drastic, but people are leaving the net in great numbers > these days. Almost as fast as people are joining. Interesting notion. Any statistics to back that up or is it just the keyboard talking? ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (11/30/87)
Several people, including Bob Webber, have sent me descriptions of ways one might get around a "pause and reflect" posting restriction. I think people are missing the point here. Of *course* there are lots of ways around any scheme. Hell, anybody can uux rnews if they want! People who want to abuse the net with technical tricks will always be able to do so. The point is, to reduce netnoise, you don't have to hit everybody. Just the average poster. If some people want to write special programs to sneak around things, let them do it. I have also gotten, as expected, people who have said, "I might forget to post something important." I still stand by my conviction that this is a contradiction in terms. But if people still feel this way, I suppose we could put in a "followup" command which simply recorded, in a file, the article-ids and author's names of the articles you wished to follow up. Then, an hour later, you could execute a command that read this file and let you prepare followups. And yes, you could get around all this with sleep commands, possibly touch commands, etc. Isn't that *special*? Don't we feel just a bit *superior*? -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
jfh@killer.UUCP (12/01/87)
In article <1173@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: > I just had an interesting thought for future versions of news. [ idea deleted ... ] > You make call this drastic, but people are leaving the net in great numbers > these days. Almost as fast as people are joining. > > Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 I like the idea of lowering net traffic. As one of the Bigger Unix.Gods wrote to me recently, (paraphrasing) "I don't read netnews because the signal to noise ratio is too high". What an incredible loss this is to those of us who need the feedback these guys have to offer. - John. -- John F. Haugh II SNAIL: HECI Exploration Co. Inc. UUCP: ...!ihnp4!killer!jfh 11910 Greenville Ave, Suite 600 ...!ihnp4!killer!rpp386!jfh Dallas, TX. 75243 "Don't Have an Oil Well? Then Buy One!" (214) 231-0993
karl@tut.UUCP (12/01/87)
brad@looking.UUCP writes:
People in the past have suggested that followups shouldn't be done
until after all the news in a group is read. Here's a further suggestion.
Change inews so that it rejects any local poster who is:
a) in rn, readnews, vnews or any other news reading program
b) accessed his .newsrc file within say, the last half hour.
It misses too many obvious workarounds, several of which exist right
now. Case in point, I'm reading/posting from inside GNU Emacs. My
normal *modus operandi* is to create an Emacs which lives all day on
my Sun; there is no way to detect that I'm using this "news-reading
program," because it's as likely to be editing /usr/lib/aliases one
minute as following up to an article the next. And it's quite
possible that my .newsrc won't get updated for fairly long periods
when I'm catching up on a (long) weekend's worth of news on Monday.
Worse, from my point of view, is that my work requires me to post to
local newsgroups fairly often. Even if you provide "deliberate
bypasses," it'll cause me more trouble than it's worth.
It's not a bad idea, but it needs some work before it's usable. I get
enough flack from people for the more-new-than-quoted-text rule in
2.11 inews. I don't need another headache.
--
Karlrsweeney@dasys1.UUCP (Robert Sweeney) (12/02/87)
>> You make call this drastic, but people are leaving the net in great numbers >> these days. Almost as fast as people are joining. I'd imagine that this net turnover, if it indeed exists, is caused more by unrelated circumstances involving the individual users. Many people get their net access through means which they don't have control over - student accounts, work machines, etc. I've noticed quite a few such people eventually turn up again on public sites, but I'd imagine that the majority are forced off the net for good. -- Robert Sweeney {sun!hoptoad,cmcl2!phri}!dasys1!rsweeney Big Electric Cat Public Access Unix (212) 879-9031 - System Operator Fight Uni.
duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Duncan McEwan) (12/02/87)
In article <1173@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >I just had an interesting thought for future versions of news. >... An idea that was floated some months ago that might be effective in reducing the volume of followup's is to only have one `follow up' command. At the end of composing the followup, the news reader asks if the sender wants to mail the followup or post it - the idea being that after the sender has cooled down a bit they might decide something they were going to post would be better mailed. In article <635@brandx.rutgers.edu> webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) writes: >What would be better (and hence encourage more people to delay >followups) would be if you could save messages off into a followup >directory ... This sounds like a useful idea that would prevent a lot of the duplication that occurs when people followup before they see if anyone else has already made the same point. It would also give people more of a chance to cool down before following up. --- Duncan Domain: duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz Path: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!duncan
aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) (12/03/87)
>brad@looking.UUCP writes: > People in the past have suggested that followups shouldn't be done > until after all the news in a group is read. First let's get straight what problem it is we're trying to solve. I see two offhand: (1) Person replies only to find a later msg in the group says the same thing (i.e., the effort was wasted); (2) person replies and is very hotheaded, delaying will cause them to cool down. Re (2), if someone wants to be hotheaded I think they'd just as soon escape to vi, write their hotheaded msg, and save it until they could post. I don't see that the software will be able to influence this (whether it *should* or not is another matter entirely). However, (1) is a valid concern of mine. I know a solution I would like to see for this would be: For the newsreader programs, particularly rn, to display after the subject, "[NNN more articles with same subject]". Presuming people keep the subject lines meaningful and without needless change, as many people do, it is then obvious whether it is time to think about following up yet or not; I think the natural tendency would be to wait for it to read "[0 more ...]" before hitting the 'f' key. This also makes it easier to decide when to hit the 'k' key in rn... (Mebbe it's just me, but I feel frustrated when I hit 'k' and it says no more articles, so the next time I *don't* hit 'k', and I see three followups I didn't want to read... or I see a followup, hit 'k', and it says no more... I seem to have bad timing with respect to hitting 'k' when it will do the most good :-) -- Andrew Burt isis!aburt Fight Denver's pollution: Don't Breathe and Drive.
sverre@fesk.UUCP (Sverre Froyen) (12/05/87)
in article <2063@isis.UUCP>, aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) says: > First let's get straight what problem it is we're trying to solve. I see > two offhand: (1) Person replies only to find a later msg in the group says > the same thing (i.e., the effort was wasted); (2) person replies and is > very hotheaded, delaying will cause them to cool down. Another hothead follows up :-) One possible solution to this would be to have the *posting* of the follow-up delayed until the user quits the news session. By then s/he will have seen any other articles on the subject and will also have had a chance the "cool down". Even better, let the `f' key just mark the article to be followed up and delay *writing* the follow-up until the news session is over. At this point list the selected articles, ask the user to reselect, and then allow the follow-up. By now the user may have decided that it is not worth the time to write the follow-up. This may reduce superfluous and hotheaded postings. Perhaps this should be extended to mail follow-ups too. If this has been suggested previously -- disregard this posting. -- Sverre Froyen UUCP: boulder!fesk!sverre, sunpeaks!seri!fesk!sverre ARPA: froyen@nmfecc.arpa BITNET: froyen@csugold.bitnet
jbatson@tron.bbn.com.bbn.com (James Batson) (12/07/87)
In article <2063@isis.UUCP> aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) writes: >First let's get straight what problem it is we're trying to solve. I see >two offhand: (1) Person replies only to find a later msg in the group says >the same thing (i.e., the effort was wasted);... > >... (1) is a valid concern of mine. I know a solution I would like to >see for this would be: For the newsreader programs, particularly rn, to >display after the subject, "[NNN more articles with same subject]". > >Presuming people keep the subject lines meaningful and without needless >change, as many people do, it is then obvious whether it is time to think >about following up yet or not; I think the natural tendency would be to >wait for it to read "[0 more ...]" before hitting the 'f' key. >Andrew Burt isis!aburt There is an important feature you may miss here, Andrew. Usually, people are following up on a specific article, and a larger percentage of folks are using 'F' than 'f'. One possible solution might be to re-implement 'f' and 'F' in the newsreaders to MARK articles as ones which a user want's to follow up on, but not invoke the post routines until all articles with the same subject have been read. Now this doesn't prevent the user from, say, escaping to the shell, posting a follow-up, and returning to the news reader. However, since many users use 'F', they will want to preserve lines to place in their follow up. Without a multiple-window screen with cut-paste facilities, the 'escape-to-shell' bit doesn't work too good for 'F' posters. In any case, the 'escape-to-shell' may be just sufficiently more difficult than waiting till all articles have been read that users will "suffer" through reading all the postings before writing their own. Certainly, the time elapsed until they get to actually draft their follow up will have it's universal effect of dulling highly emotional reactions, and maybe the length of flames will decrease given this. Comments? Jay Batson ARPA: jbatson@bbn.com UUCP: ...!rutgers!harvard!bbn.com!jbatson
vnend@engr.uky.edu (D. V. W. James) (12/09/87)
In article <19046@bbn.COM> jbatson@tron.bbn.com.UUCP (James Batson) writes: >Certainly, the time elapsed until they get to actually draft their >follow up will have it's universal effect of dulling highly emotional >reactions, and maybe the length of flames will decrease given this. >Jay Batson Questionable. If the article made them steam the first time around, re-reading it the secondtime around (while editing out parts for the posting) is likely to rekindle the flames. So all of the emotion of the original would still be there, with whatever effects smoldering for X length of time adds in. It's an interesting idea, but lets *test* it before we implement it. -- Later y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!vnend; vnend@engr.uky.edu; vnend%ukecc.uucp@ukma.BITNET Also: cn0001dj@ukcc.BITNET, Compuserve 73277,1513 and VNEND on GEnie "...the net exists on good faith and a lot of hand waving." Chuq