root (06/15/82)
I predict that a keyword system to replace the current newsgroup system would fail miserably. Take a look at the Subject: field of some articles now posted -- some are blank, and many give little clue as to what an article contains. (Incidentally, this is why "just type n" is not a counter to the garbage frequently posted, as some have offered.) If users won't give a useful Subject: field, can they be expected to include useful keywords? I feel that more discipline or control over the creation and use of newsgroups would do much more good than eliminating them. Newsgroups give a mechanism to eliminate traffic between sites of entire categories of garbage, something that would be difficult to do with a keyword system. Bruce Jerrick ...teklabs!ogcvax!bruce Oregon Graduate Center
wagner (06/18/82)
Couldnt keywords be generated automatically from the text of the article if the author was uninterested in picking special keywords (the normal case, I would assume). Michael Wagner, UofToronto Computing Services
sft (06/21/82)
--- automatically generated keywords?
For articles as short as most net submissions, automatic generation
of keywords is very unreliable. I've seen several articles around
the net referring to the "HP 2621", for example, without ever mentioning
the (key)word "terminal". Manual generation of keywords also allows
us to maintain a common set of keywords throughout the net. If we
agree that all articles about terminals will be marked with the
keyword "terminal", then I don't have to specify all the other
names for such things (HP 2621, CRT, screen, etc.) to get the
articles I want. The newsgroup system encourages people to use
an existing newsgroup if their submissions fit into one of the
established categories, and to create a new group when they
don't. We need to maintain that global organization in any
system.
<flame on>
Whatever system we choose for identifying the first article on a
subject, we still need a better way of handling followups!
Ignoring internals for the moment...
If I choose not to read an article (answer "n" to "More [ynq]?"),
I shouldn't see the followups to that article. If I do choose to
read the article ("y" or <return>), I should see the followups.
Of course, we also need commands to turn on/off the followups to
any given article.
<flame off>
Steve Tarr
...!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!sft
...!harpo!stolaf!sft