lauren@vortex.UUCP (06/15/83)
While I like the overall concepts of the proposed "K" news system, I do have one basic reservation. I suspect that any system that heavily relies on users to select meaningful keywords may not be generally successfully. It's hard enough to get people to come up with useful "simple" subject lines posted to the "correct" newsgroup! Badly chosen keywords might be worse than no keywords at all, since useful messages might never be seen by persons whose news profiles "assume" well chosen keywords on all messages. The bottom line is that if keywords are chosen with the same care and consideration that many subject/newsgroup determinations are made, now we won't have gained much (and might have actually lost something) over the existing news systems. Just an opinion. --Lauren--
trb@floyd.UUCP (06/16/83)
I think that the important feature of knews is not that it has IMPORTANT (evident and self-explanatory) keywords, but rather that it has keywords which can be used as handles to segregate discussions. Also, the matrix structure, even if only for the grouping of locales, is very appealing. Both of these features are sorely lacking in bnews. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491
paulsc@tekecs.UUCP (06/16/83)
I have the same reservation about the proposed K news, that some people may not bother to chose good keywords. How about scanning the article to figure out what the keywords ought to be? It won't be 100% accurate, but it might be good enough. Paul H. Scherf P. O. Box 1000 Del. Sta. 61-201 Tektronix Engineering Computing Systems Wilsonville, Oregon, USA UUCP: ...!XXX!teklabs!tekecs!paulsc (where XXX is one of: aat cbosg chico decvax harpo ihnss lbl-unix ogcvax pur-ee reed ssc-vax ucbvax zehntel) CSNET: tekecs!paulsc @ tektronix ARPA: tekecs!paulsc.tektronix @ rand-relay