Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!giza.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Debate on USENET Message-ID: Date: 4 Oct 89 03:28:22 GMT References: <365@capmkt.COM> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: OSU Lines: 26 In-reply-to: brent@capmkt.COM's message of 29 Sep 89 17:55:58 GMT karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: # Interestingly, USENET debates have a property that doesn't exist with # face-to-face debates: multiple participants separated by huge # temporal delays. # # I tend not to give much credence to this argument these days, because # of the low propagation times of the NNTP massfeed hubs, one of which # is my site. brent@capmkt.com writes: Just because a posted article reaches a machine within 20 minutes doesn't mean that it is read and responded to as soon as it comes in. It seems that a great many people misinterpreted my posting. I wasn't saying that there aren't "people delays" involved in postings. The article to which I was responding (147@isgtec.UUCP) was written from the technical standpoint of articles simply not getting from one place to another fast enough, e.g., "what I contribute may not be seen for a week." _That_ was my point: The technical details of getting articles from place is not a reason for debates having the over-run character frequently seen, because it is true that articles traverse at least the bulk of the "backbone" sites in considerably less than a day, usually considerably less than a couple of hours. --Karl