Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!spdcc!xylogics!cloud9!banyan!gil
From: gil@banyan.UUCP (Gil Pilz@Eng@Banyan)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: aquaria (LONG) (required reading for you alt.aquaria folks)
Keywords: this is the spawning of the cajun aquarium
Message-ID: <538@banyan.UUCP>
Date: 9 Oct 89 21:46:56 GMT
References: <20686@gryphon.COM>
Reply-To: gil@banyan.com
Organization: Banyan Systems, Inc.
Lines: 55

In article <20686@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
>Hade I given much thought to the mechanics of how an uninitiated user
>would find what group to post/read, I would probably conclude that
>one way NOT to do it would be to examine all the groups on the net,
>by title, in hierarchical order.

>Perhaps: ``grep aq $HOME.newsrc'' or ``grep fish $HOME/.newsrc''

This still begs the question of how an uninitiated user is supposed to
know that _this_ is the optimal way to look for a group.  Call me
stupid (go ahead, many people do) but when I see something organized
in a tree structure I assume it's built that way for a _purpose_. I
thought that the namespace was orgainzed the way it is _in_ _part_ as
an aid to finding groups of mutual-interest (as well as to aid in
distribution decisions, etc.). I can't be the only one prone to this
"mistake". If we're going to treat the namespace as flat both when
creating and searching for groups then let's make it explicit and stop
_pretending_ it's a tree.

However, I still maintain that a well organized tree-like namespace is
better than a flat namespace. People don't always know _exactly_ what
they're looking for. It is much easier to browse a library, for
instance, than an unorganized used book store. In addition a flat
namespace has the problem of correct key(s) selection. Someone
mentioned being unable to find "alt.aquaria" because they were
searching on "aquarium". Once you've winnowed out the extraneous
possibilities by traveling down a tree such mistakes are much easier
to recover from than the more or less random method of "pick another
key".

>I was thinking that there would be a small amount of intimidation
>involved becasue it is a SCI group. Several posters have mentioned
>this already, which conforms my suspicions. They will probably
>mail their question ot a high profile poster rather that not ask
>it. In this day and age of expanding USENETism, anything that
>makes a user question whether they should post or not post
>is most likely a good thing.

Why not carry this to it's logical extreme and moderate the group ? If
a controlled discussion is what you want it seems somewhat inadequate
to leave the door open to anybody who stumbles across the group.
Frequently the biggest bozos (such as myself) don't have the _brains_
to be intimidated by big words like SCIENCE.  *YEEHAH* !! The good
lord gave us hands to type with and our addle-headed opinions are as
good as anyone _else's_, Tommy Jefferson said so !

"come back to Boston as soon as you can
 the whole thing ain't gone down according to the plan
 in the morning when I wake I don't like what I see
 late night my dreams they are terrifying me"
	- dream syndicate

Delbert de la Platz @
Church of the Holy Nuclear Holocaust (chemotherapy for Mother Nature)
(gil@banyan.com)