chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal) (12/08/89)
In article <1076@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >I propose that a new group be formed, the purpose to be a simple posting >area for pointers to interesting discussions. Great idea. I vote that we call it "mod.ber".
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/08/89)
chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal) writes: >In article <1076@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >>I propose that a new group be formed, the purpose to be a simple posting >>area for pointers to interesting discussions. >Great idea. I vote that we call it "mod.ber". Chip probably should have explained for the (relative) newcomers that "mod.ber" was, back before the Great Renaming, exactly this kind of group. It failed miserably, and that was with much less volume, many fewer groups and smaller audiences. Today, news.billboard's likely to be a disaster. The only remote hope would be to make it moderated in some form to enforce a no-followup/no-duplicate rule, and even then.... (who'd be willing to moderate the thing? And define 'interesting'?) chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] When it comes to matters ourside your specialties, you are consistently and brilliantly stupid [....] with respect to matters you haven't studied and have had no experience basing your opinions on casual gossip [....] and plain misinformation -- unsuspected because you haven't attempted to verify it. -- Robert Heinlein to J.W. Campbell, Jr. 1941
kannan@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Kannan Varadhan) (12/08/89)
Thus spake chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) >chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal) writes: >>In article <1076@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >>>I propose that a new group be formed, the purpose to be a simple posting >>>area for pointers to interesting discussions. > [...] The >only remote hope would be to make it moderated in some form to enforce a >no-followup/no-duplicate rule, and even then.... >(who'd be willing to moderate the thing? And define 'interesting'?) Isn't that what news.announce.newgroups is supposed to be doing, with its "call for discussions" postings? Just wondering... KANNAN -- Kannan Varadhan, Ohio Supercomputer Center, Columbus, OH 43212 [(614) 292-4137] email: kannan@osc.edu | osu-cis!oscsunb!kannan
tale@cs.rpi.edu (Dave Lawrence) (12/08/89)
In <74831@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> kannan@cis.ohio-state.edu (Kannan Varadhan):
Isn't that what news.announce.newgroups is supposed to be doing, with
its "call for discussions" postings?
No, it's not. news.announce.newgroups is not intended at all to
serve the function which Ross proposes. It is to notify people of
new groups (and, as an added charter, some mailing lists) that have
been created, or are simply being proposed. The call for discussion
is only to discuss whether groop foo should exist, not to discuss the
topics of foo. Yes, sometimes people overlook that (all of the
gambling discussion in news.groups comes to mind), but it is the sole
purpose.
Dave
--
(setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/09/89)
kannan@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Kannan Varadhan) writes: >Isn't that what news.announce.newgroups is supposed to be doing, with >its "call for discussions" postings? No, not really. The idea of news.billboard is so if, for instance, we decide to start up an interesting discussion on Lithuanian Sheepdogs in talk.politics.soviet we can post a message in news.billboard saying "Hey! There's an interesting discussion on Lithuanian Sheepdogs in talk.politics.soviet. C'mon down!" This is considered to be better than cross-posting the discussion to rec.pets for some reason (which would accomplish the same thing -- informing the interested audience, unless you believe there'd be a pocket of Lithuanian Sheepdog fanciers who don't read rec.pets but would read news.billboard). Of course, the charter would specifically exclude boring discussions of Lithuanian Sheepdogs, so you'd never see a "Hey! There's a boring discussion on Lithuanian Sheepdogs in talk.politics.soviet..." Of course, the definition of 'interesting' is left up to the poster. "Hey! there's an interesting discussion of slime mold being started up in sci.bio! Everyone come join!". Also, imagine how useful news.billboard would be if it was getting 50 "new discussion (interesting)" postings a day. Especially since half of them would probably have subject lines like "Interesting discussion starting" on them. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] When it comes to matters ourside your specialties, you are consistently and brilliantly stupid [....] with respect to matters you haven't studied and have had no experience basing your opinions on casual gossip [....] and plain misinformation -- unsuspected because you haven't attempted to verify it. -- Robert Heinlein to J.W. Campbell, Jr. 1941
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (12/09/89)
In article <37116@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > >.... Today, news.billboard's likely to be a disaster. The >only remote hope would be to make it moderated in some form to enforce a >no-followup/no-duplicate rule, and even then.... > >(who'd be willing to moderate the thing? And define 'interesting'?) > I agree that it would be difficult. But, because of the sheer size and volume of postings, it becomes more needed. How to run it is the question. Frankly, I'm not sure.... -- Ross M. Greenberg, Technology Editor, UNIX Today! greenber@utoday.UUCP 594 Third Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 Voice:(212)-889-6431 BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212 To subscribe, send mail to circ@utoday.UUCP with "Subject: Request"
kannan@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Kannan Varadhan) (12/09/89)
Now that I understand what Chuq was driving at... ;-) Thus spake chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) >Of course, the charter would specifically exclude boring discussions of >Lithuanian Sheepdogs, so you'd never see a "Hey! There's a boring discussion >on Lithuanian Sheepdogs in talk.politics.soviet..." > >Of course, the definition of 'interesting' is left up to the poster. "Hey! >there's an interesting discussion of slime mold being started up in sci.bio! >Everyone come join!". Also, imagine how useful news.billboard would be if >it was getting 50 "new discussion (interesting)" postings a day. Especially >since half of them would probably have subject lines like "Interesting >discussion starting" on them. Isn't 50 a kinda teensy number? Can you imagine someone say, "Hey, there's an interesting discussion going on in comp.unix.wizards, about how to setup your prompt to reflect your current directory?", or someone else saying, "Hey, there's an interesting discussion about the GNU manifesto/charter in alt.religion.computers"? :-) :-) If you didn't moderate such a group, all of us would go berseck, and get confined to a mental assylum real soon. If you did moderate it, the moderator would be consigned to the mental assylum real sooner. Isn't there a chinese proverb which goes, "better you than I"? :-) Maybe what we need instead is some kind of summarizing schema, that is left to the user's discretion, to use as they please. For instance, I find it a reasonable guide to just scan the list of user's and the corresponding subjects as soon as I enter a newsgroup. A global list of such information could be kept somewhat trivially? From my minimalistic understanding of how the various news transport mechanisms work, here's how I think it would happen.. When a message is received, the poster, subject, keywords, abstract, and newsgroup are written to a file. When I want to read on Lithunian Sheep dogs, I can grep from the file, and see if anything interesting turned up. If instead, I see most postings of the day have been on changing directories, I can do a global catch up of sorts. I could grep on keywords, posters etc. Ofcourse, I am assuming that you are interested in what anyone anywhere anytime has to say about LSDs (Lithunian Sheep Dogs :-), or that poster X always makes sense (What am I saying here? Geez! :). KANNAN -- Kannan Varadhan, Ohio Supercomputer Center, Columbus, OH 43212 [(614) 292-4137] email: kannan@osc.edu | osu-cis!oscsunb!kannan
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (12/10/89)
The problem, to me, is that there are many interesting discussions taking
place in slow newsgroups -- for a brief time, then they go away. Part of
my job is to keep an eye on certain newsgroups. I'd love to be able to keep
an eye on all of them, but Real Work Must Be Done, alas.
So, then, what are the options available?
Perhaps just a mailing list for others with total information overload?
Or a bunch-o-moderators for news.billboard?
--
Ross M. Greenberg, Technology Editor, UNIX Today! greenber@utoday.UUCP
594 Third Avenue, New York, New York, 10016
Voice:(212)-889-6431 BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212
To subscribe, send mail to circ@utoday.UUCP with "Subject: Request"newsadm@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (System News Administrator) (12/11/89)
I think questions of this nature would probably get reasonably good answers in news.newusers.questions. I would not be in favor of creating a new top level group for this sort of traffic at this time. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + *READ* ---> The opinions expressed above are to the best of my knowledge, + + However all options should be discussed with persons who have professional + + training with the subjects covered here. * ALL POSSIBLE DISCLAIMERS APPLY! + + ===>FROM: newsadm@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov Pioneer's USENET ADMINISTRATOR + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++