gnu (12/23/82)
In his book Literary Machines, Ted Nelson proposed that in the Xanadu system, there will also be much too much info to absorb, as in Usenet. His solution is the free-enterprise one (as usual) -- anyone can make indices and put them in the database. So, like magazine subscribing, you'd tend to read and follow whoever's published indexes tended to match your interest profile the best. A way to do that in netnews, local to a site, is to say "If Soandso liked/disliked this article, show me/can it." Each person could have their y's and n's recorded in a file in their home directory, if they chose. A readnews-like program could combine these files as a custom filter on what it showed you. For example, my .newsrc could say "Only show unix-wizards articles to me if either Shannon or Pugs was interested". Arbitrarily complex or bizzarre combinations could be used, with selection based on Person and/or OtherPerson and/or NewsgroupTemplate and/or TitleStringSearch and/or TextSearch and/or... You could specify what to do if your judging person(s) haven't read the message yet -- show it unjudged, or keep it til later. And note that more subtle responses than 'y' and 'n' could be kept (and amended after seeing the text, of course). People whose interests fit many others' interests could distribute their judgements to other sites where people were interested. There are obvious rough edges too long to deal with here, but even this is a better filter than none, and it retains the totally anarchistic philosophy. Here's to filtering on the READING end! John Gilmore, Sun Microsystems PS: Actually, just the capability to say "For the next 3 weeks, don't show me any message with 'mac' or 'whopper' in the title" would be a big improvement.