Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!ginosko!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Reconsidering *real change won't happen*
Message-ID: <1525@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 30 Oct 89 17:07:42 GMT
References: <1989Oct26.234217.988@everexn.uucp>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 45

In article <1989Oct26.234217.988@everexn.uucp>, karen@everexn.uucp (Karen Valentino) writes:

|  As a person whose background is in clinical psychology, it really does 
|  rub me the wrong way whenever someone dismisses what is one of my life's
|  *passions* as "just psych" or "unscientific."  IMO, family therapy
|  is a topic that would probably fare as *.aquari* is faring.  It would be
|  banished to rec because the majority of people on the net would say,
|  "It's not science."  

  I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I use the guideline "is it a
hobby" to decide if a topic is rec or sci. This is why aviation and
ham-radio, both of which contain VERY technical content at times, are in
rec. The readers and posters are mainly people who have a
non-professional interest in the topic.

  I doubt that phychology is not something which people do as a hobby,
and I would not feel that it belonged in rec. This is why I *do* feel
that aquaria belongs in rec, not because of any lack of technical merit,
but because the majority of the participants are not doing it as their
major source of income.

  Obviously this is just my opinion, but it seems to meet the primary
criterion of a guidline, in that it leaves few ambiguous cases.

  As I have said before in private messages, I don't feel that the
benefit of another grand renaming would be worth the cost in redoing
active lists, etc. 

  What is needed is a whole better way to organize the data, something
like hypertext. I have some links on one system which allow the user to
look at messages in several ways, such as comp.os.sysv.bugs and
comp.os.bugs.sysv, etc. This allows those using the visual reader to
follow the tree in a way which means something to them. What we need is
a way to translate a groupname into a keyword list to allow reading by
actual topic. I realize that keywords don't work all that well, as used
toady.

Perhaps some database person can come up with an idea which will make
this practical.

-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon