biep@klipper.UUCP (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) (10/27/84)
[General question: Are there line bugs in the mail programs too?]
Since I've received some questions about my keywords proposal,
I start thinking it never reached the outer world (Perhaps due
to the fact I added keywords :-)). Hence the following:
A very extreme form of my proposal is the following:
- Get rid of newsgroups, just keep one bulk of news articles.
- Any article posted should contain some keywords, by which it may
be selected (automatically, by mapping to a selector file.
That file can contain logical expressions over keywords).
- Net.general --> articles with no keywords at all
- In followups, most keywords are copied from the original article, but
some special ones are modified/added/deleted:
First --> Second --> Third --> Fourth --> Special-uniquekey.
(First is the default keyword added to posted articles, to
prevent them from coming in "net.general". This modification
sequence causes specialized discussions to move from the
screen to anyone not interested. When Fourth --> Special.., a
special article announcing the fact of the creation is sent.
"Special-uniquekey" is a unique key (subject to modification by
by the sender of the article)[Unique = probably unique], which
is added to identify this discussion. In this way interested
people might add "(Special-uniquekey)" to their selector.
After some time the original (not special) discussion will
die out.
Facts, Flame, Pro, Con, and possibly some other keywords which
do not seem to be inheritable will be deleted. So, if in the
corner "Motts", an article labelled "Pro" is added, meaning
that the existence of gay people is thought to be a positive
thing, certain people will have to declare they are "Pro" any
time they want to post to the "Pro" subcorner. (Better key-
words are to be used perhaps, like "Gay-is-good", by those
who want to discuss things within such a framework. Then "Pro"
and "Con" have clear meanings.)
- Articles with *only* the keyword "First" seem to be still pretty
general, and might be read by lots of people. So current
(mis-)users of net.general might be quite happy posting
there.
- Any group wanting a discussion corner within a larger corner, could
add its own keyword and quit reading articles without. On the
other hand, others might quit reading their subcorner as well.
- If enough people care, and post articles like: I only read politics
articles if the keyword "Facts" is added, and expect this
keyword not to be misused ,
information content of several corners might increase.
- Discussions about forming/retracting newsgroups will be unnecessary,
because corners will blossom up when- and whereever needed,
and die out after being left empty. Only every now and then
one has to screen through one's selector to avoid checking
on dead keywords.
- Some standard corners will remain necessary, e.g. to give an overview
of what's on the net at the moment, etc.
--
Biep.
{seismo|decvax|philabs}!mcvax!vu44!botter!klipper!biep
I utterly disagree with everything you are saying, but I am
prepared to fight myself to death for your right to say it.
--Voltairesmb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (10/30/84)
The suggestion has been made before (notably by Brad Templeton) that keywords are a better way to organize netnews. I disagree. Look how poorly folks do now when choosing from a finite set of categories. With the whole English language to choose from, I suspect I'd wear out my 'n' key...