benn@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Thomas Cox) (01/26/86)
[] In article <2645@amdahl.UUCP> gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) writes: >I agree that good spelling is an important thing, and it would be >nice if every article contained no misspelled words, but let >the *poster* do it! Why make article posting more cumbersome >for those of us with perfect spelling? And besides, we aren't >even talking about solving a *technical* problem with news, but >to appease the pedantists who cannot tolerate seeing misspelled >words posted to the network. > >PS -- I ran this article thru spell before posting it (I thought > you might like that). >Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,seismo,hplabs}!amdahl!gam Before everyone else responds, too... No, the point of this is NOT to correct spelling per se. It is EXPRESSLY to make posting *more* cumbersome. The correcting of misspellings is a side benefit. The more time one spends on a posting, the fewer posts one sends to the net. And the more effort involved, especially nontrivial effort [as opposed to "Do you really want to post this? [yn]" where one automatically hits 'y'], the less volume is posted. This front-end for posting will not keep anyone from posting things that are important. It just makes it less easy to flood the net with trivial postings. BTW, did spell(1) really accept 'thru'? :-) Who, me? I spell perfetly! -- Thomas Cox ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!benn Live long, avoid intentionalist terminology, and prosper.
gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) (01/28/86)
In article <1541@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> benn@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Thomas Cox) writes: > No, the point of this is NOT > to correct spelling per se. It is EXPRESSLY to make posting *more* > cumbersome. The correcting of misspellings is a side benefit. > The more time one spends on a posting, the fewer posts one sends > to the net.... I am opposed to this, too. I see what the goal, is: the net is (for the large part) a shitty place, and maybe if we make it more difficult to post it will get better. But I think this is the wrong approach; I don't agree that making the system more cumbersome to use will improve it. If you like you can go so far to put a forced "sleep(600)" in the postnews/Pnews systems to make it even more cumbersome! I agree we need to somehow "shrink the net", but not to the disadvantage of its users. (yes, this is mainly a philosophical point which I really don't want to debate here). -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,seismo,hplabs}!amdahl!gam ~ See the soldier with his gun ~ ~ Who must be dead to be admired ~
rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (01/29/86)
On the suggestion to run news postings thru spell(1) and put the poster back into his editor before accepting the posting: > Before everyone else responds, too... No, the point of this is NOT > to correct spelling per se. It is EXPRESSLY to make posting *more* > cumbersome. The correcting of misspellings is a side benefit. If it's cumbersome you want, boy have I got some techniques! (Thoughts of postnews putting you into a shell that requires IBMish JCL for the command before it will accept the posting...learning a little JCL is a side benefit...) I will not accept that software should be designed so that it is cumbersome to use. That's ridiculous, nay, silly. (Common, perhaps, but silly none- theless...) > The more time one spends on a posting, the fewer posts one sends > to the net... The same argument can be applied to most uses of a computer: Make it hard enough to use and people won't abuse it. The argument fails, though: (1) If it's hard enough to use, it won't get used. (2) You reward persistence, not valid use. (3) You waste resources (both human and machine). > It just makes it less easy to flood the net with trivial postings. No, it makes it more wasteful of the local machine's time, because as soon as you introduce a nuisance-only feature, someone's going to find a way around it--such as a suitably clever shell script to take over the submission while the reader/poster goes on with other news. Even this only lasts as long as it takes the SA to get annoyed. I delayed this posting long enough to bounce up/out of the editor, make a copy and feed it to the C compiler. Then I went upstairs and got a glass of wine...but I came back and posted it anyway. So what? Please don't try to protect me from myself. It may not seem as if I know what I'm doing, but I've got a better idea than anyone else does. -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Worst-case analysis must never begin with "No one will ever want..."