weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) (03/23/88)
Posting-Front-End: Gnews 1.3 [This hasn't been about new newsgroup proposals for quite a while--and you sysadmins expect USERS to find the correct newsgroup?--so I'm re- directing the discussion over to news.misc. See you there.] In article <34@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes: >In article <1501@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >> b) Even smarter commands, which might check the article text >> to help make suggestions. > We're talking serious AI here. This is really the rub. When someone >actually implements this, only THEN will I believe it can be done. This is >a lot more difficult than it appears on the surface. And AI means Lisp, which Gnews is coded in. True, only a minority of news users will ever run Gnews, but I expect that there will soon be enough of them that Gnews makes possible the rapid development and testing of new newsreader techniques. Gnews has features and features galore--so many that I've even converted people from vi & rrn to Emacs & Gnews. And the reason Gnews has so many features is because it is written in ELisp. RMS has already done most of the nasty low-level work for me, and I'm left with merely programming the concepts. End of advertisement, back to the testing of new newsreader techniques: if these seem to work in the limited context of Gnews users, getting the code into C for everyone else will proceed rather straightforwardly, as the de- sign problem has already been solved and shown viable. Note that Gnews it- self doesn't have to hold anyone hostage to someone else's testing: it'd be very trivial to introduce a gnews-volunteer-hook. But it would be very easy to force a successful scheme into the C code. Indeed, such a two-layer approach to obnoxious features might mitigate against harsh user reactions, as when the 50% rule suddenly appeared. And as for the "serious AI" we're talking here: Greg, you're exaggerating. Remember ELIZA? The program doesn't have to be great, just good enough to block noise noise noise that you and I and hundreds of other posters are absolutely sick of. And similarly, while any code can be gotten around, most of it will be left in at most sites. Thus, looking for "Guin?ess" in articles crossposted to 4 or more news- groups, or counting the number of times "abortion" or "fetus" shows up in a non talk.abortion article, etc. are not terribly difficult tasks. There are 100s of these kludges that could be tried. And now for some fairy stories. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask yourself: what would be the effect of the following warning window if it showed up to a potential sci.astro poster on "Velikovsky": ** Hello. You are apparently posting about Velikovsky to sci.astro. ** Unfortunately, this is an extremely volatile topic, and all such ** discussion is to take place in talk.origins. ** ** Note that the question of whether Velikovsky's work is or is not ** "science" is irrelevant: newsgroups are not ideal Platonic cate- ** gories, but convenient ways to organize topics. ** ** Nor is there any need to "defend" science, if that is why you are ** posting. Most newsreaders don't need to be convinced, so keep your ** chastisements to e-mail. And if your e-mail bounces, consider the ** matter dead--surely others sent e-mail too. ** ** If your site doesn't get talk.origins, it is for a reason: your site's ** management has decided that it cannot afford to carry or merely does ** not want to appear to sponsor this very topic of discussion. ** ** Do we understand each other? (y or n) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask yourself: what would be the effect of the following if it showed up to an article cross-posted to comp.unix.{questions,wizards}. ** Hello. You are crossposting between the unix questions and wizards group. ** I suspect you have a question which you find exasperating, and you want to ** make sure that the wizards see it to save the day. ** ** Please don't bother the wizards like this; more than enough knowledgeable ** people read the questions group that you will probably get the help you ** need there. If you don't get any help in question, then ask the wizards ** group. Do not cross-post that time either. ** ** Do we understand each other? (y or n) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask yourself: what would be the effect of the following if it showed up in response to a short article containing "I vote yes/no" in news.groups. ** Hello. You are posting your vote. Don't bother. The vote will be ** ignored no matter what. Believe it or not, there are people out there ** who care very much about this matter--more than you do--and will take ** your name down if you post, and then double-check to see if your name ** appears on the final tally. ** ** Since mail bouncing happens on EVERY collection of votes, the rules ** for newsgroup voting have already taken into account this problem in ** an ill-defined but generally fair way. ** ** So if you can't get your mail through, we're sorry. You tried, and ** that's the end of that. ** ** Do we understand each other? (y or n) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask yourself: what would be the effect of the following if it showed up in response to a long signature: ** Oy gevelt, with a signature that big, who needs an article? (y or n) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Surely each of you can each think of a dozen more like this! Perhaps a mailing list for collecting these should be set up--since I'm not around that often for now, I can't volunteer. If I convert Brad or someone else who likes his idea over to Gnews, I expect that by the end of this summer there'd be a working prototype, plus enough Gnewsers to give it a real workout. Note that the default response means the posting is rejected, or in some cases, like the questions/wizards cross-posting warning, means that the "Newsgroup" field is modified. So, how about it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- About Gnews: 1.3 will be released in about a week; it'll be on ucbvax for anonymous FTP. FSF will distribute Gnews with the rest of Emacs as soon as someone tests and debugs the rn-emulator code. I'll throw in some testimonials this time around: | We have a couple of our local emacs fans sorta |beta testing it, and they drop by and show me all the funky features |and such all the time. They think its the best thing since sliced bread. |Definitely a win. My congratulations. Looks far more flexible |than rn or rnews |I love Gnews; I use it every day. |Thanks for the fixes you sent me. I'm very impressed with Gnews now |that it is basically working. Gnews isn't perfect yet--most of the above came with a big "but...". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 I vote YES on soc.intercourse, YES on comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d.d.d, YES on talk.wheat.chaff, and am now collecting votes for alt.collectivism --the moderated group where everyone agrees with us at the Brahms Gang or ELSE. (Or else what? I don't know. We'll start with Maroney Awards!)
gore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore) (03/24/88)
Well, I don't know what effect such questioning would have on other people,
but my reaction would be to replace the function that does this with a
function that minds its own business.
Jacob Gore Gore@EECS.NWU.Edu
Northwestern Univ., EECS Dept. {oddjob,gargoyle,ihnp4}!nucsrl!gorelisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper) (03/24/88)
In article <7928@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes: >In article <34@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes: >>In article <1501@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >>> b) Even smarter commands, which might check the article text >>> to help make suggestions. > >> We're talking serious AI here. .... >And AI means Lisp, which Gnews is coded in. .... >And as for the "serious AI" we're talking here: Greg, you're exaggerating. >Remember ELIZA? The program doesn't have to be great, just good enough to >block noise noise noise that you and I and hundreds of other posters are >absolutely sick of. The simplest solution is of course to have a program that just says "no" every time somebody tries to post something. This will effectively block out all the noise. And it is very simple to code. >Thus, looking for "Guin?ess" in articles crossposted to 4 or more news- >groups, or counting the number of times "abortion" or "fetus" shows up in >a non talk.abortion article, etc. are not terribly difficult tasks. There >are 100s of these kludges that could be tried. [examples of "intelligent" screening messages deleted] You wouldn't need only hundreds, you would need many, many more rules. This is NOT as simple as a program as ELIZA that merely bounces back the input of the user in the form of a question: "tell me more about your desire to post to comp.foo.bar...." There are so many newsgroups, and so many possible keywords for each newsgroups. Besides, just looking for keywords isn't enough since they can mean different things in different context. A posting to comp.parallel that mentions "abortion" 17 times doesn't have to be a misdirected talk.abortion posting for instance, it could very well deal with how to get rid of unwanted processes in a multiprocessor environment. Language is another issue, discussions doesn't necessarily have to be in English. Postings can be restricted to certain geographical areas and a posting restricted to, say, West Germany could very well be in German, even in a newsgroup where the discussion is primarily in English otherwise. This IS serious AI and I don't think that even e-lisp will make such a screening system feasible. Even if such a screening mechanism WAS possible I would object to it. The reason is that I think those participating in the discussion of a newsgroup should decide the topic by themselves. Every newsgroup has a brief categorization of suitable topics for discussion but what's interesting within a certain category changes with time. A set of screening rules would make everything much more rigid. The wonderful thing with usenet is that it is what we make it to. A set of detailed screening rules, expressing what somebody sometimes decided should be allowed or not allowed, will hamper this basic principle. Finally, who wants to get kicked around by a machine? It is bad enough with the little message I get every time I try to post something: "This program may post news to many machines. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do that? [ny]" Not to mention the obnoxious 50% rule for inclusion of earlier postings. Granted, it has spurred people's creativity to come up with bypassing techniques like adding a lot of blank lines at the end or substituting ">" with some other character. (Fortunately this rule isn't enforced at my site.) Whenever I run a program I want to be the one that is in charge, not the other way around. Having to fight my way through a set of well intended but obnoxious rules questioning the contents of my postings would either give me an ulcer or force me off usenet. I do recognize the problem with junk postings that this screening technique is supposed to solve. But I think this is the wrong way to do it. Those in charge to take care of this problem are the other readers of the affected newsgroups. It is possible to send e-mail to people generating too much noise and ask them to stop. Sometimes flames ARE appropriate (although many of them belong to the "noise"). >** Do we understand each other? (y or n) n Bjorn Lisper PS. The original posting contained some adavertising for Gnews. I'm in no way opposed to Gnews, as long as people with itching fingers don't try to hack in their favorite prejudices about the subjects of certain newsgroups. I haven't had the opportunity to use Gnews yet, but I use GNU emacs all the time and if Gnews is to rn what GNU emacs is to other editors then it must be good. DS
woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) (03/24/88)
In article <7928@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes: >Thus, looking for "Guin?ess" in articles crossposted to 4 or more news- >groups, or counting the number of times "abortion" or "fetus" shows up in >a non talk.abortion article, etc. are not terribly difficult tasks. There >are 100s of these kludges that could be tried. Yes, there are. My question is: how useful is that information? I say: not very. Someone might post a line in a comp.lang.c article like "I wrote a really bad subroutine to do this; it was truly an abortion". Counting words is NOT GOOD ENOUGH to do classifications. You have to determine if the word is really used in the context that would place it into the classification for it (for example, the above article would certainly not belong in talk.abortion). And THIS is what would require "serious AI". As for the "fairy stories", I don't think it would be possible to keep up-to-date with this sort of thing. Remember, lots of news admins are doing that job as a 10th or 11th priority item. Maintaining a program as complex as a GOOD keyword-based news system cannot, in my opinion, be done as a 10th priority item. --Greg
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) (03/24/88)
In-reply-to: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) In article <25590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, lisper-bjorn@CS (Bjorn Lisper) writes: >the user in the form of a question: "tell me more about your desire to post >to comp.foo.bar...." There are so many newsgroups, and so many possible >keywords for each newsgroups. But not all of them have repeated problems caused by naive users over and over again. If a problem is annoying enough in a certain newsgroup, then by the very fact that it is annoying, someone will be motivated to work on it. If no one is willing, then it musnt' have been annoying to begin with. > Besides, just looking for keywords isn't >enough since they can mean different things in different context. A posting >to comp.parallel that mentions "abortion" 17 times doesn't have to be a >misdirected talk.abortion posting for instance, it could very well deal with >how to get rid of unwanted processes in a multiprocessor environment. Articles are not blocked, they are queried. Just say no if you want. >Language is another issue, discussions doesn't necessarily have to be in >English. Postings can be restricted to certain geographical areas and a >posting restricted to, say, West Germany could very well be in German, even >in a newsgroup where the discussion is primarily in English otherwise. SO WHAT? I couldn't care less about what's happening to a West German only newsgroup. The small size of it mitigates the need for much anyway. > This >IS serious AI and I don't think that even e-lisp will make such a screening >system feasible. No, it isn't serious AI. If it goofs, nothing worse than a little annoy- ance has occurred. So what? When it works, 1000s of little annoyances are prevented. And if it doesn't translate German into English to check if "abortion" is being discussed, so what? Really, you're exaggerating the difficulties way out of proportion. >Even if such a screening mechanism WAS possible I would object to it. The >reason is that I think those participating in the discussion of a newsgroup >should decide the topic by themselves. And it's decided year in and year out that Velikovsky belongs in talk.origins. > Every newsgroup has a brief >categorization of suitable topics for discussion but what's interesting >within a certain category changes with time. A set of screening rules would >make everything much more rigid. And a set of screening rules could include a definitive answer/explanation to the Monty Hall problem which is hitting sci.math, rec.puzzles for the third time in the last six months. > The wonderful thing with usenet is that it >is what we make it to. OK. You tell me how the readers of sci.astro can make it Velikovsky-free. > A set of detailed screening rules, expressing what >somebody sometimes decided should be allowed or not allowed, will hamper >this basic principle. I'd like to see some higher quality newsgroups around here. And I'd like to see it done without moderation. The most basic screening would serve as a "Hey you, think before posting", or "Sorry, bub, but this belongs in a different newsgroup." Why does that bother you? I don't know of anyone who's going to miss "I vote ..." articles in news.groups. Do you? >Finally, who wants to get kicked around by a machine? It is bad enough with >the little message I get every time I try to post something: > >"This program may post news to many machines. > Are you absolutely sure that you want to do that? [ny]" Hahaha. No way is this in Gnews. The rules are only brought into play when a certain condition is met. Most postings should cause no problems. >Whenever I run a program I want to be the one that is in charge, not the >other way around. Having to fight my way through a set of well intended but >obnoxious rules questioning the contents of my postings would either give me >an ulcer or force me off usenet. Well if asking you to post a naive Unix question to comp.unix.questions only, instead of cross-posting to comp.unix.wizards, just ruins your di- gestion, then I think maybe you need to relax a little. Of course, the same could be said for the person who gets upset at such crosspostings in the first place. >I do recognize the problem with junk postings that this screening technique >is supposed to solve. Good. > But I think this is the wrong way to do it. Those in >charge to take care of this problem are the other readers of the affected >newsgroups. It is possible to send e-mail to people generating too much >noise and ask them to stop. That's what I usually do. Along with KILL files. What's wrong with doing it once and for all times with certain standard no-nos? I cited 3 or 4 examples, none of which you mentioned. Tell me what was wrong with them. > Sometimes flames ARE appropriate (although many >of them belong to the "noise"). I couldn't agree more! >PS. The original posting contained some advertising for Gnews. In fact, that advertising was the primary reason I posted in the first place. I think Emacs+Gnews really makes for a wonderful development environment. We We hear people make suggestions about do-this, do-that over and over again, but as very few have the time, they just keep getting proposed over and over again. To me, having a two-layer implementation method, whereby the first version is written in ELisp and tested on Gnewsers, and then it gets recoded in C for rn/Pnews, allows not just for speed in development, but trial runs to see whether the idea is practical or not. Maybe the rules-based screen can work. Maybe it can't. Maybe it will be too obnoxious, or maybe people will go along with the flow. I don't know, you don't know, NOBODY knows. Gnews offers a simpler and quicker way to test this. If the method turns out to be a failure, then whoever worked on it hasn't wasted as much time as he would have had he worked on it in C. > I'm in no >way opposed to Gnews, as long as people with itching fingers don't try to >hack in their favorite prejudices about the subjects of certain newsgroups. How about, "the standard prejudices that have been settled on repeatedly"? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In article <40@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes: >In article <7928@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes: >>Thus, looking for "Guin?ess" in articles crossposted to 4 or more news- >>groups, or counting the number of times "abortion" or "fetus" shows up in >>a non talk.abortion article, etc. are not terribly difficult tasks. There >>are 100s of these kludges that could be tried. > > Yes, there are. My question is: how useful is that information? I say: >not very. And I say: nobody knows. > Someone might post a line in a comp.lang.c article like "I wrote >a really bad subroutine to do this; it was truly an abortion". Say then requiring "abortion", "fetus", "person" to show up four times between them--and not quoted as I'm doing now either--would be a better requirement. I'm not trying to write any definitive rules right now. >Counting words is NOT GOOD ENOUGH to do classifications. I'm NOT proposing classifications. I'm proposing half-hearted, lukewarm classifications. The user is free to answer "no" to the "do we understand each other?" question, ie, "No, Mr Computer Sir, you didn't understand me. Shut up and let me post." > You have to >determine if the word is really used in the context that would place it >into the classification for it (for example, the above article would >certainly not belong in talk.abortion). And THIS is what would require >"serious AI". NO NO NO. If the rough-and-ready rule is bad, it will just mean a little more annoyance. But it doesn't require "serious AI". The user always has the final say. > As for the "fairy stories", I don't think it would be possible to keep >up-to-date with this sort of thing. I see that you are not rebutting these stories, but are pointing out an external difficulty. Is this a concession, then, that you agree that such fairy stories, if implemented, would have a beneficial effect? I'll agree that it's possible to come up with monster stories instead--but I think that it has to be agreed upon first whether or not in principle this idea of Brad's is worthwhile. Bjorn Lisper explicitly said he didn't think so --how about your opinion? I can do no more than say to Bjorn, "I disagree, here's the reason". But when it comes to questions of actually implementing something that you and other widely respected sysadmins think is OK in principle, but just happen to believe is a Lisper's pipe-dream, then only trying it out will tell us who's correct. And there's no point in trying it out if the re- action from the backbone is a loud "hell no". Remember junker? > Remember, lots of news admins are doing >that job as a 10th or 11th priority item. Maintaining a program as complex >as a GOOD keyword-based news system cannot, in my opinion, be done as a >10th priority item. Huh? This makes no sense. Why is keeping up to date for one kind of pro- gram any harder than any other? There's a database of rules, and responses. If it's out-of-date, then some will be missed. So what? And deciding just how much work this will be, based on your assumption that it's going to be a very complicated AI monster, isn't really a fair criterion yet. Remember: the idea is to encourage better traffic, not create a Usenetopia. Will it work? Hell if I know. And hell if you know either. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 They can all go to hell. Of course, some should go before others. One has a responsibility to make discriminations. --Simon Lacerous
mohamed@hscfvax.harvard.edu (Mohamed_el_Lozy) (03/24/88)
In article <40@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: > Remember, lots of news admins are doing >that job as a 10th or 11th priority item. > >--Greg If only more people in the usenet community realised that simple fact life would be simpler for all of us. Getting news 2.11 to work was a big hassle. It is working now. Who wants news 3? I sure as hell don't.
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (03/25/88)
In article <25590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper) writes: >Not to mention the obnoxious 50% rule for inclusion of earlier postings. >Granted, it has spurred people's creativity to come up with bypassing >techniques like adding a lot of blank lines at the end or substituting ">" >with some other character. (Fortunately this rule isn't enforced at my site.) >Whenever I run a program I want to be the one that is in charge, not the >other way around. Having to fight my way through a set of well intended but >obnoxious rules questioning the contents of my postings would either give me >an ulcer or force me off usenet. A lot of people seem to misunderstand these code features. You should feel no prouder in cheating the software than you should at getting off for a crime due to a technicality. If one of these rules spots your aritcle, you're getting a big hint that people don't want to see that sort of article. This is not a message that you should try and get around it. We don't want to see long signatures with pictures, US Mail addresses, phone numbers and quotes. We don't want to see articles where the included material hasn't been compacted and summarized. Changing the ">" to "+" does not make your article more desirable to people. It only cheats the software. I have said this time and time again, but nobody seems to listen. The net is for the *readers* and not the posters. If a software check makes posting 100 times harder, and it helps eliminate 10% of the unwanted articles, that's worth it. I used to think that the transmission cost was the big cost in an article. A typical article costs $10 or so per kilobyte. The big cost is the 3 seconds spent scanning and rejecting the useless article. With 15,000 readers, that represents over 12 person-hours of time. Even at very low wages, that's around $60 in wasted time. It's more like $150 at programmer wages. [ This only refers to articles that are skipped, which are wasted time. Articles that get read take more time, but in theory it isn't wasted. ] So if the rules you hate make posting take an extra minute, tough. If they stop a bogus article then they save TWELVE HOURS of other people's time. That's why I advocate: o No automatic followup, text inclusion or signature inclusion features. o Checking like Matthew described. o No posting news while reading news o Checking like we have now, for too much inclusion, sig too long o Default minimal distribution for articles o Much better and more detailed article classifications o Lots of small, low-volume newsgroups o No posting ability for novice users until they are approved by the site admin. You may think this somehow abridges your *freedom* of the net. The point I'm making is that all the noisemakers abridge everybody's freedom of the net, and they've forced a great many people to quit the net because of the noise. Where's their freedom because they won't speak up? It seems we get a nasty positive feedback, where noisemakers scare away everybody but their kind. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
rice@oberlin.UUCP (Brian Rice) (03/25/88)
In article <7928@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) writes: > And AI means Lisp, which Gnews is coded in. > > [etc.] > > And now for some fairy stories. > > [several thousand bytes worth of fairy stories] Suppose that Gnews had the requisite rules to implement for all these fairy stories. THEN suppose weemba tried to post THAT MESSAGE. He'd be y-or-n'ing for days! (If weemba can write me a function HALTS(f), I retract this comment.) Brian Rice UUCP: ...{bellcore,ihnp4}!oberlin!rice Oberlin College BITnet: SBR5018@oberlin CSNET: rice@oberlin.edu "Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa." -- David Byrne
woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) (03/25/88)
In article <7961@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes: >In article <40@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes: >> Yes, there are. My question is: how useful is that information? I say: >>not very. > >And I say: nobody knows. In practice of course you are right. However, when it comes to an officially-supported version of news software, the two are equivalent. Before I would advocate making such a system part of the standard news software, I need to be convinced that it works and that it does some good. >Say then requiring "abortion", "fetus", "person" to show up four times >between them--and not quoted as I'm doing now either--would be a better >requirement. I'm not trying to write any definitive rules right now. But sooner or later you have to. My point is that I do not believe that you can do so in any reliable way. Convince me I'm wrong (I am keeping an open mind) and I'll believe your proposal is a "good thing". >The user is free to answer "no" to the "do we understand each other?" >question, ie, "No, Mr Computer Sir, you didn't understand me. Shut up >and let me post." Look at how many complaints we already get about the 50% rule. Of course I am in favor of the 50% rule, but not everyone agrees with me :-) This is more of the same, except that the heuristics are much more difficult to define in any meaningful way. >I see that you are not rebutting these [fairy] stories, but are pointing out an >external difficulty. Is this a concession, then, that you agree that such >fairy stories, if implemented, would have a beneficial effect? Well, there were over 100 lines of "fairy stories" and I only have so much time to read news :-) I personally think they might be beneficial, but only if they are kept up-to-date. I really don't like the idea of hard- coding things for individual newsgroups into the posting software. It makes it much harder to change the newsgroup structure (including such things as renaming groups or deleting groups) and I think we need to retain maximum flexibility in this area. >And there's no point in trying it out if the re- >action from the backbone is a loud "hell no". Remember junker? Unless I explicitly say so, these are just my PERSONAL OPINIONS and do NOT, repeat NOT, represent any official position of the backbone. We frequently have disagreements among ourselves, but the minority usually agrees to go along with the majority because it is the only thing standing in the way of having the net degenerate into COMPLETE chaos (as an example, I was opposed to letting the unauthorized creation of rec.music.beatles stand because I thought it set a very bad precedent. I was overruled because most of the rest didn't think it was worth making a fuss over. Looks like the same thing has happened again with comp.sys.amiga.tech, which I am not carrying on my site but which someone continues to feed to me, but that is a flame for a different discussion). And as for "hell no", I'm not ruling anything out completely. I just have to be convinced it will work and do some good before I would advocate having it included in the official news software distribution. >Huh? This makes no sense. Why is keeping up to date for one kind of pro- >gram any harder than any other? All sorts of reasons, including such things as frequency and magnitude of changes. One reason people can get away with maintaining news as a 10th priority is that the software is stable and requires relatively few changes. Naturally, if you want to try something like this out on your own site, no one is stopping you. In general, I am against keyword-based news systems because they sound great in theory, but I don't believe they will work in practice. You're right in saying I don't KNOW they won't work, but you don't know they WILL. If someone implements one that works, maybe they can convince me I'm wrong, but until then I still think keyword news is an unworkable idea. --Greg
tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff) (03/25/88)
Can you imagine the reaction to the following warning screen appearing to a poster on news.misc: ** You seem to be posting yet another over-intelligent blocking message ** to be thrust in the face of poor net users trying to enjoy themselves. ** As you may have heard, these high-tech wet blankets are slowly choking ** the life out of what was once a raucous, wide-open discussion resource. ** Your latest contribution just might be the straw that breaks the camel's ** back. I will post it if you absolutely insist, but don't blame me if this ** site is pushing up daisies in another two years, along with half the Net. ** ** Do we understand each other? (y or n) -- Tom Neff
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) (03/25/88)
In article <717@oberlin.UUCP>, rice@oberlin (Brian Rice) writes: >Suppose that Gnews had the requisite rules to implement for all these fairy >stories. Let's see now. There was... :if it showed up to a potential sci.astro poster on "Velikovsky": :to an article cross-posted to comp.unix.{questions,wizards}. :in response to a short article containing "I vote yes/no" in news.groups. > THEN suppose weemba tried to post THAT MESSAGE. On this tiny 3-for-3 sample, it looks like it would go through pretty easily, now doesn't it? >He'd be y-or-n'ing for days! I suspect news.misc would have very few rules, if any, for precisely the reason being mentioned. Here, Brian, maybe *you* need a rule: ** You are responding to a member of the Brahms Gang. It would improve ** matters immensely, net-bandwith-wise, if in trying to be clever with ** them logic-wise, you were also correct. ** Do we understand each other? (y or n) ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) (03/25/88)
In article <47@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes: >> I'm not trying to write any definitive rules right now. > > But sooner or later you have to. Not me. But that I can get very close to the "right" rule about talk.ab- ortion on my second try, without trying very hard, is indicative that the writing of some such rules isn't going to be hard. Obviously they can't cover every situation--that *would* required impossibly advanced AI--and just as obvious no one is proposing that these rules cover every situa- tion. > My point is that I do not believe that >you can do so in any reliable way. Convince me I'm wrong (I am keeping an >open mind) and I'll believe your proposal is a "good thing". I'll let someone else do the convincing. If a few people are seriously interested in working this out, they'd presumably exchange "fairy stories" and similar rules, and then try to knock each other's suggestions down, until they reach some kind of stability. Then they'd try to convince you. >>The user is free to answer "no" to the "do we understand each other?" >>question, ie, "No, Mr Computer Sir, you didn't understand me. Shut up >>and let me post." > > Look at how many complaints we already get about the 50% rule. And in retrospect it should have been experimented with a little more heavily before it was installed net-wide. I'm suggesting this very proposal to those interested in writing rules-based screening for news posting. > This is >more of the same, except that the heuristics are much more difficult to >define in any meaningful way. Exactly. Whoever wants to write such a system has to work hard at it. >>I see that you are not rebutting these [fairy] stories, but are pointing out >>an external difficulty. Is this a concession, then, that you agree that such >>fairy stories, if implemented, would have a beneficial effect? > > Well, there were over 100 lines of "fairy stories" and I only have >so much time to read news :-) I personally think they might be beneficial, Now how does this comment about "beneficial" square with your above comments about "reliability" and "much more difficult"? They didn't take much effort to think up. (Really, Greg, if you're trying to save time, then just agree with me!) >but only if they are kept up-to-date. So when will discouraging posted votes in news.groups go out of date?? > I really don't like the idea of hard- >coding things for individual newsgroups into the posting software. It >makes it much harder to change the newsgroup structure (including such >things as renaming groups or deleting groups) and I think we need to >retain maximum flexibility in this area. You would be absolutely correct, if we were trying to set up a sophisti- cated system, sniffing around for all possible violations of the "rules". But something much more low-key, dealing mostly with the things that long net.experience has determined are ungood--eg, vote-posting in news.groups --is based on what's been with the net for a long time, and will probably not go away, not become obsolete, and not need much in the way of mainta- nance. Whoever writes this kind of system has a lot of hard thinking to do. But I don't think he needs to do any advanced AI, which is what I was object- ing to when I first got into this discussion. >>And there's no point in trying it out if the re- >>action from the backbone is a loud "hell no". Remember junker? > Unless I explicitly say so, these are just my PERSONAL OPINIONS and do >NOT, repeat NOT, represent any official position of the backbone. [...] > And as for "hell no", I'm not ruling anything out completely. I just have >to be convinced it will work and do some good before I would advocate having >it included in the official news software distribution. Exactly my point. Whoever wants to write something like Brad suggested needs to know ahead of time if there's going to be serious, permanent trouble or if he merely needs to be slick with his programming and marketing skills. > All sorts of reasons, including such things as frequency and magnitude >of changes. One reason people can get away with maintaining news as a 10th >priority is that the software is stable and requires relatively few changes. Since I envision that only things that long experience has agreed are a waste of net.bandwidth, I don't see why it'll be more than a one-time change, and not distributed separately but folded in with some later major news software release. > Naturally, if you want to try something like this out on your own site, >no one is stopping you. In general, I am against keyword-based news systems >because they sound great in theory, but I don't believe they will work in >practice. b Keyword-based news system try to classify everything, and must expand to keep up with new topics or die. These screening suggestions are just try- ing to classify a few already well-known things. All your objections seem to be against the former. > You're right in saying I don't KNOW they won't work, but you don't >know they WILL. Which is one of the reasons that I am not going to be writing such a system. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Emacs Weenie) (03/25/88)
I like it. I've created a new form of rudeness! In article <116@atpal.UUCP>, tneff@atpal (Tom Neff) writes: >** You seem to be posting yet another over-intelligent blocking message >** to be thrust in the face of poor net users trying to enjoy themselves. >** As you may have heard, these high-tech wet blankets are slowly choking >** the life out of what was once a raucous, wide-open discussion resource. Ain't it a shame. Those interested in those raucous wide-open "I vote yes"/ "I vote no" discussions might have to start their own in talk.bizarre, since those high-tech wet blankets choked the life out of them in news.groups. >** Your latest contribution just might be the straw that breaks the camel's >** back. I will post it if you absolutely insist, but don't blame me if this >** site is pushing up daisies in another two years, along with half the Net. To really make those daisies grow, fertilize with endless reruns of toilet seat UP! DOWN! UP! DOWN! UP! DOWN! discussions in soc.singles. >** Do we understand each other? (y or n) Not yet. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/26/88)
>Here, Brian, maybe *you* need a rule: > >** You are responding to a member of the Brahms Gang. It would improve >** matters immensely, net-bandwith-wise, if in trying to be clever with >** them logic-wise, you were also correct. > >** Do we understand each other? (y or n) Even more realistic: ** You are responding to a member of the Brahms Gang. Do you realize that ** they don't care what you think if you disagree with them, and that ** posting rebuttals is a waste of your time and the net's bandwidth. ** Are you sure you want to do this, when it's been found that ignoring ** them completely is MUCH more effective? (n or n) chuq (heh-heh) Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Speed it up. Keep it Simple. Ship it on time. -- Bill Atkinson
farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) (03/30/88)
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes: > >Ask yourself: what would be the effect of ... "Velikovsky" >Ask yourself: what would be the effect of ... cross-posting >Ask yourself: what would be the effect of ... votes in news.groups >Ask yourself: what would be the effect of ... long .sigs I believe that the effect would most likely be a rather stiff resistance to the use of this hypothetical news software. The problem is, as it is in all such situations, that the people who know enough to not do rude and obnoxious things aren't going to be the problem, in main, but they *WILL* have to deal with those who DON'T know enough, if not on the Net, then in trying to deal with the folks who will demand to know why the program won't let them post the latest Right-To-Life news release to soc.women. As a sysadmin, I rely on the good sense and intelligence of the folks who use my system, and reserve the right to judge them on their actual performance, and not against the perceived Usenet mean. I would prefer to be allowed to continue to take that stand, rather than requiring the news software to act, even in miniature, as Net.Cop. -- Michael J. Farren | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just {ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}! | dogmatize it! Reflect on it and re-evaluate unisoft!gethen!farren | it. You may want to change your mind someday." gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame