mcq@druxt.UUCP (McQueerRL) (01/28/84)
[]---- In reading suggestions regarding new groups and watching discussions arise and die in various groups, one notices especially the spasmodic nature of net discussions. One article spawns a discussion which clutters up or enlivens a newsgroup for a while, depending on your viewpoint. If it continues for long enough somebody either suggests net.new-topic-to-get-this-crap-out-of-here-so-I-don't-have-to-wade-through- it, or net.new-topic-so-I-can-follow-this-discussion-coherently, or if it's something clearly not deserving of a newsgroup, "OK, enough already!!!". We need a mechanism to allow more flexible segregation of discussions. The followup mechanism doesn't seem to be quite enough. I have a thought on this. The proposal may not be feasible for 1001 reasons since I don't know the internal structure of the news software, but I thought I'd toss it out for comment anyhow. It seems to me that since the basic means of control within USENET is the newsgroup, what we really need is a way to have a more dynamic newsgroup tree. There was a discussion on automatic deletion of newsgroups recently, with points being made on both sides. What I would suggest is a mechanism that would allow discussions which result in a temporary increase in volume to result in a temporary sub-newsgroup to the original. THESE newsgroups would expire and their spooling directories removed as the discussion in them abates. Let me give a few details. Put two new header items on articles, FTOPIC and FPOST. FTOPIC is an optional field which the original poster of an article can create to designate a subgroup for subsequent discussion if there needs to be one. At a given site, the arrival of a followup to an article causes the creation of the subgroup, if it doesn't already exist, which I will call a followup group. The original article and its followup are placed in this subgroup. Other followups arriving are put there also. Now you may post to this new group, unsubscribe to it, or whatever. The FPOST item is to allow posting to followup groups in a way which won't conflict with the normal distribution of news. The newsgroup item of a posted article contains only the original group, as before. The FPOST item, if present, contains the followup group "tail". Arrival of an article with a tail should also precipitate the creation of the followup group. Posting software should not allow the posting to a followup group that doesn't exist on the posting site, however. By handling things this way, the arrival of a posting at a site previous to the followup article which created its followup group will cause a minimum of problems. Followup groups are removed when the articles in them expire, indicating that the discussion which spawned them has died down. This also means that readnews should cleanup lines referring to stale newsgroups in the .newsrc file. We probably need an indication in the active newsgroup file to tell whether a newsgroup is permanent or a followup group. What we now have is a way for the person whose sense of humor doesn't tend towards the ridiculous to unsubscribe to net.misc.wombat, or for the person inclined in that direction to be able to enjoy it undiluted. Or more seriously, to keep an eye out for something that might interest you in a group like net.micro, without having to sift through the usual heavy volume. Some changes in newsgroup presentation may be needed for readnews, but not drastic ones, I would guess. I use my own news reader, so I'm not going to propose anything for readnews. If we want to get fancy, we can even maintain the article which caused the creation of the followup group until the group expires, and allow the news reader to see the article that started the discussion on request. There IS a need for an intelligent decision on the part of the poster of an original article to determine whether or not the article needs a followup group designated, and the choice of a sensible name. I don't think name collision is a worry - it would probably be rare, and if it happened the articles probably discuss similar topics anyway - let them get lumped together. I assume existing versions of news software ignore unrecognized header items, so that this mechanism could be added to individual sites without causing any problems in others. At those sites, the discussions would remain lumped together in the parent group, as they are now. You could have the followup group feature able to be toggled on or off on a site basis, also, to allow sites worried about resource usage to keep the number of spooling directories and administrative file sizes down to a minimum. The basic idea here is that the current newsgroup tree structure remain, with newsgroups under control of site administrators, however we add a dynamic tree structure underneath it to accommodate spates of heavy traffic on one topic. Note that we would also have a good indicator of the need for a new permanent newsgroup - a followup group which never goes away, indicating permanent interest (or a non-expiring article, which could be cleaned up). It's just a thought - maybe somebody wants to kick the pros and cons around a little. Bob McQueer decvax!ihnp4!druxt!mcq (I MAY be moved from druxt to drutx soon. If druxt doesn't know about me, try drutx).
sew@minn-ua.UUCP (01/31/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:minn-ua:10900001:000:1456 minn-ua!sew Jan 30 12:39:00 1984 (A non-blank first line seems to be an obscure net custom) The "notes" programs already seem to meet your description pretty well. Notes presents messages as messages with responses tacked on to them. Its index shows the title of the original message and the number of responses. A message is thus similar to a subgroup with a bunch of messages in it. This is as if each message were its own subgroup. You can manually select the message which you want to read, then you can step through the responses in sequence. This is similar to reading a news file with a program which simply presents the messages in the sequence received. If you're using the sequencer, if a message has any new responses then you first are shown the original message and then the new responses. This is similar to using a program which only prints the news received since the last time you read news. As for getting rid of stale subjects, "notes" keeps a message and all its responses if the most recent response is less than a certain age. I think at our site a message is deleted if there have been no new responses in two weeks, but all this is implementation dependent. There might be some similar programs. As "notes" shows, modifying usenet news is not necessary. It can be (is?) done with the "References" line in a message header, which contains the message-ID of the original message. From the analog digits of Scot E. Wilcoxon ...ihnp4!umn-cs!minn-ua!sew
essick@uiuccsb.UUCP (01/31/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:uiuccsb:3400007:000:2187 uiuccsb!essick Jan 29 13:06:00 1984 I think that working on mechanisms to dynamically add and delete newsgroups (or subgroups) is not the right way to solve the problem of "there's not enough structure out here". Adding and deleting newsgroups at this level (followup groups) is just another way to map two dimensions (newsgroups and the discussions within them) into one dimension (even more newsgroups). This works fine for Mr. A. Square in Flatland, but we're blessed with being able to see a few more dimensions. Why not develop and use a tool that can handle two dimensions? At the University of Illinois, we've been using the notesfile system for 2 years on Unix. Our PLATO system has been using the notesfile concept for 8 years. A notesfile contains a time-ordered (by inception) list of discussions. Each discussion contains a base note and a time-ordered list of responses. You get commands to skip around within a discussion, skip over the rest of boring discussions plus the usual set of write a response and mail to the author commands. Here are a few things that the notesfile system does that the news system doesn't: @ skip the rest of a discussion @ easily see other articles in the same discussion @ index pages of discussions Notesfiles are handy for other things than reading about Wombats. We use them for project logs, problem reports, and to help determine policy. The fact that we can quickly (one key) go back and see what the problem was when a solution comes around makes it very handy. The archiving facilities are pretty extensive. How does doing things like "place all the discussions from this notesfile older than X days and marked solved into an archive" and then being able to reference the archive in the same way you reference the active notesfile sound? I've managed to get a little off track. I really want to stress the fact that I think all these extended-newsgroup ideas are just trying to squeeze two dimensions into one and that it would be better to use a tool that understood about the extra dimensions. Why do people prefer screen editors like vi to line editors like ed? -- Ray Essick, University of Illinois -- ihnp4!uiucdcs!essick, essick.uiuc@rand-relay
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (02/01/84)
I agree with Ray, dynamic creation/removal of newsgroups is not the solution. Notesfiles has (apparently) shown that having subdiscussions marked within newsgroups is sufficient. News does this as well, with the References line. It's just that most of you out there are running 2.10 or earlier, which pays no attention to this line. 2.11 is under development and sorts by discussion. There are also commands being considered to do things like "skip the rest of this discussion" and "unsubscribe to this discussion". In doing this, a problem is emerging. A lot of you "wonderful people" (-: out there don't use the built in followup command, but instead post a fresh article. Often you type in any random subject you can think of, and of course you don't include a references line. (I understand that some of you want a cooling off period, or a line printer interface. We're working on this but it's a hard problem and suggestions are welcome.) When somebody posts a fresh article with a different subject, there is no way the news system can tell it's really a followup. The major distinguishing factor, as I understand it, between news and notes in this regard is that notes forces you to use their one user interface, so if you want to follow up you must use their command. News allows several different user interfaces, including delayed things like the line printer, and so can't force you to use the followup command. It isn't clear which is better, obviously both have their advantages. If you have a wonderful idea to ensure that followups are properly marked as such, please let us know (cbosgd!uucp-news) Mark Horton Mark
woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (02/01/84)
Great. Plug your own program. Notes is nice. But I for one (and I'm
sure also the vast majority of USENET readers who read this article) are
fucking sick and tired of getting articles titled "Orphaned Response"
which we automatically retitle "generic bullshit". If you are going to
plug a system (which may or may not be better than 'readnews'), let's
make people aware of its flaws as well. Find a better way of dealing
with responses whose base note has not yet arrived, and then maybe I'll
join you in touting notes.
Greg "prove it first" Woods
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!kpno | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!stcvax}
!hao!woodstjt@kobold.UUCP (02/01/84)
Everybody seems to agree that grouping discussions within a newsgroup is
the right way to organization presentation of news. It is also clear
that notes has been doing this all along. How about some feedback from
notes users on how often the followup mechanism gets subverted and how
annoying this is?
Also, I suspect the situation will be self correcting. Currently,
preserving the Subject: and/or References: is only important to a
minority of people using Usenet (i.e. notesfile sites and 2.11 test
sites). Therefore, there is little incentive for the rest of us to
prefer using followup commands to posting new articles. Once 2.11
becomes as widespread as 2.10 is now, the majority of people will
benefit from properly using followup's and will be equally
inconvenienced by new articles which should have been followups.
This should provide the necessary motivation for paying more attention
to the Subject: and References: line.
Note: I assume that the line printer interface would also group
articles by discussions so that line printer users would not be
disenfranchised.
--
Tom Teixeira, Massachusetts Computer Corporation. Westford MA
...!{ihnp4,harpo,decvax}!masscomp!tjt (617) 692-6200 x275phil@amd70.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (02/02/84)
I get pretty sick of orphaned response too. Essick's attitude seems
to be that he doesn't care or at least that he's not going to fix
the problem.
I also don't like not being able to read encrypted jokes or automatically
find out about new newsgroups, which are two of many problems with notes.
--
Phil Ngai (408) 988-7777 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!philcrl@pur-phy.UUCP (Charles LaBrec) (02/02/84)
We ran notesfiles for about a year in conjuction with B news before I threw it out the door. While we liked the screen oriented behavior and index page, when vnews arrived we decided we liked that better for the reasons below: 1) minor point--some of us disliked the 'moded' command set 2) ver 1.3 on our 2.8 BSD PDP-11/44 constantly screwed up. net.sources had to be turned off because large articles trashed it completely. I had to 'adb' some notesfile index about once every other week to clear the NFINVALID bit. 3) My major gripe was, and still is, its basic incompatibility with the rest of USENET. At the time, it interfaced to news through an 'A' news interface. This meant no "References:" header for the rest of the net, and losing any other header except Article-Id, date, and path, and even then notesfiles would lose all of the path except for the tailing "site!user" 4) Its screen display was not very intelligent. At 300 baud, I couldn't stand it. Also, it was not possible to "fine-tune" the position of an article on the screen. What I mean is that both "readnews" (through "more") and "vnews" allow you to scroll the screen by one line, thus enabling someone's code fragment to fit on a screen. 5) Other nit-picky things like: subject limited to 30 (?) or so characters, no subject line in saved notes, not being able to save a note w/o a header line and a trailing "-------" (makes it a pain to grab things off net.sources and "sh" them), REQUIRING a mail router since path info is lost, not being able to use a simple "grep" to find something somewhere in notes (all notes in a group are kept in a single file that is read protected because of read/write access controls), and max note size of 64Kb (big problem for net.sources). I could probably go on, if I thought about it some more, but these are trivial dislikes. I guess I'll end this with a list of advantages: 1) the index page is good, except that it is almost useless when trying to scan for a few new responses in a mire of crap, since you couldn't tell which notes had new responses. (Of course, the sequencer knew, but you didn't want to see all the new stuff). 2) responses are kept together, along with their parent 3) it takes about 75% the disk space of news 4) it is possible to limit access to certain groups by user or group. The permissions are read/write/answer, where answer allows to enter a followup only, and not a new discussion. 5) each news group can be administered by a normal user, who can be given "director" access (a "super-user"-like permission list on the specific notesfile) 6) you can pick the order of presentation of news groups Charles LaBrec UUCP: pur-ee!Physics:crl, purdue!Physics:crl INTERNET: crl @ pur-phy.UUCP
sew@minn-ua.UUCP (02/04/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:minn-ua:10900002:000:306 minn-ua!sew Feb 3 14:39:00 1984 <> I meant to use "notes" as an example, not as the best. Aren't there some other programs which structure the information carried in news files? Also, does "orphaned response" only affect the site which got the response before the message, or does notes propagate an additional message around the net?
essick@uiuccsb.UUCP (02/06/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:uiuccsb:3400008:000:1146 uiuccsb!essick Feb 5 13:43:00 1984 To answer a few questions ... re: How often is the notesfile followup mechanism subverted? About a dozen times over the last two years for articles generated at UIUC or the notesfile sites we feed (total about 12 USENET nodes). I think part is that people tend to respond immediately. Part of it is also that it is easy to get back to a note you want to respond to. re: orphan stuff The notes code doesn't propogate the foster parent. The foster parent is used only as a placeholder until the true father arrives. Sometimes he never makes it. In the notes transfer format, only the base note carries the title to a discussion. This is why we have the "Orphaned Response" title. The parent fills in the correct title when he gets there. re: interfaces PLATO sneaks by with a single interface because all the terminals are identical. I designed the Unix version for CRT's running at least 1200 baud. No wonder 300 baud hard copy users don't like it. The "erase-abort" code that is in place now will flush the remainder of the output when a keypress is detected. This makes slow CRT users happier. -- Ray Essick, University of Illinois
tw@hp-pcd.UUCP (02/09/84)
Guy,
You are correct in assuming that most of the win/lose is in the
news gateway software. Actually the changes to generate legit
news headers were pretty simple, and have the added advantage of
making it unnecessary to run both news and notes on your gateway
machine, since you can now just uux rnews on some remote machine,
same as news does.
I've sent the code back to Ray Essick, so it should make it into
the next release of notes; meanwhile if anyone is dying to change
over, send me mail and I'll see about getting the stuff to you.
Tw Cook - HP Portable Computer Division, Corvallis, OR
{hplabs,harpo,hpfcla}!hp-pcd!twdonn@hp-dcd.UUCP (02/10/84)
I've been following the notes vs. news wars for a while, and I think maybe a clarification is in order. There are two, intimately related but distinct, versions of notes. There are the UI versions, directly done (and supported?) by Ray Essick. There is also the UCB "version" in the "contributed software" section. The UCB version is 99% the Essick version, but Ray Spickemier has fixed a few of the problems. It turns out that the problems are exactly those that are complained about a lot! He's added a "%" key for decription of rot13 jokes, and "|" and "^" (analoguous to s and S) for pipes. He's also cleaned up the notes creation and monitoring some. We had one site here that refused to run notes, but now wouldn't use anything else. The UCB version is based on UI 1.3, I'm told; I don't know much about UI 1.6 yet. We run notes only on all our HP built machines, and have no complaints. Orphaned responses are in general a symptom of news' occasional unreliability, not any problem of notes directly; you see the orphaned responses in reading news, it just isn't as visible that its an orphan. (How many times have you thought "I don't know what this is a respnse to". Usually one blames ones memory; with notes, you know that you aren't losing your mind, you havn't seen anything about it before!) Donn Terry hplabs!hp-dcd!donn
tw@hp-pcd.UUCP (02/12/84)
> /***** hpcvln:net.news / apollo!rees / 11:31 am Feb 13, 1984*/ > Subject: Re: A Thought on Newsgroup Structure - (not nf) > > The problem is that notes doesn't conform to the usenet standard > for formatting articles. It has its own idea of what the headers > should look like, and it tosses out the "References:" line, while > inserting a bunch of junk into the body of the article. > > I've heard all the "moving target" arguments, and I sympathize, > but all you notes fans should get off your soapboxes long enough > to bring notes up to the standard for message interchange that the > rest of us have agreed to. > /* ---------- */ If you'll examine the header for this article (generated with notes) you will find that it conforms completely to the "Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages", and that it contains a "References:" line which refers to your own article [assuming that there isn't an 'A' news site between yours and mine, something not under my control]. You might also notice that 'a bunch of junk' was not inserted into the body of the article. Tw Cook - HP Portable Computer Div, Corvallis OR - hp-pcd!tw
rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees) (02/13/84)
The problem is that notes doesn't conform to the usenet standard for formatting articles. It has its own idea of what the headers should look like, and it tosses out the "References:" line, while inserting a bunch of junk into the body of the article. I've heard all the "moving target" arguments, and I sympathize, but all you notes fans should get off your soapboxes long enough to bring notes up to the standard for message interchange that the rest of us have agreed to.
saj@iuvax.UUCP (02/15/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:iuvax:2800001:000:875 iuvax!apratt Jan 29 16:16:00 1984 Clearly, your article is one which would deserve the "make this a subgroup if there are any followups" flag. But sometimes it isn't all that clear, until several days after the original note is posted. Then, when it does become apparent that a subgroup is warranted, *several people* would tack a subgroup-spawning designator to their postings. Result: six different sub- group designators for a single subject arriving in the same day. The reverse problem from identifier clash. It does sound like a good idea, but this flaw sprang out at me right away. Could someone please post info on the differences between notes and news? I use notes, and I am guessing that when I write a "response" to a note, it is passed as a "followup" to that note. On the other hand, I may be badly confused. Thanks anyway... ---- -- Allan Pratt ...decvax!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!apratt
saj@iuvax.UUCP (02/15/84)
#R:druxt:-88400:iuvax:2800002:000:1132 iuvax!apratt Jan 31 16:59:00 1984 I guess I am not familiar enough with the differences between news and notes. I wrote based on the "notes" concept (a base note and responses to it, tied together in two dimensions) because that's really all I've ever dealt with. I've used the PLATO notesfile system, and UNIX notes, and yet another notes system, and I guess that's all I really know. The fact that the original poster used "followup" instead of "response" didn't faze me; it did, however, leave a wrong impression. In any case, the "notes" driver still doesn't do the job. When there is a protracted discussion on the net, say about waterbeds in net.misc, it seems logical that there might be a temporary subgroup created to deal with the sudden volume on a specific topic. If you want to read it, fine, but it is much easier to skip over it if you aren't interested. Can somebody describe for me the bugs in the "notes" software? A site here at IU (isrnix) recently gave notes up in favor of news -- to me, that seems like giving a word processor up in favor of a hammer, chisel, and stone slab. ---- -- Allan Pratt ...decvax!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!apratt
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (02/17/84)
> If you'll examine the header for this article (generated with > notes) you will find that it conforms completely to the "Standard > for Interchange of USENET Messages", and that it contains a > "References:" line which refers to your own article [assuming > that there isn't an 'A' news site between yours and mine, > something not under my control]. You might also notice that 'a > bunch of junk' was not inserted into the body of the article. I suspect what we have here is winning and losing versions of "notes", with hp-pcd running the former - or, more accurately, winning and losing versions of the notes/news gateway. If this is the case, the winning version should be made available to one and all, and sites currently using the losing version encouraged to switch. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
msc@qubix.UUCP (Mark Callow) (02/20/84)
-- From Allan Pratt
Could someone please post info on the differences between notes and
news? I use notes, and I am guessing that when I write a "response" to a note,
it is passed as a "followup" to that note. On the other hand, I may be badly
confused. Thanks anyway...
--------
1. Look at the subject line of this article. It has been truncated
to 40 characters courtesy of "notes". Also a completely useless
suffix "- (nf)" has been added.
2. When you write a "response" to a note it is not passed as a followup
but as an ordinary article. The distinguishing feature of a
followup is a "References:" line in the article header. The
notesfiles -> news "gateway" does not provide this extremely
useful field.
--
From the Tardis of Mark Callow
msc@qubix.UUCP, decwrl!qubix!msc@Berkeley.ARPA
...{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!qubix!msc, ...{ittvax,amd70}!qubix!msc