Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!xylogics!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Give it up, folks
Message-ID: <1989Nov15.160912.8148@world.std.com>
Date: 15 Nov 89 16:09:12 GMT
References: <36339@apple.Apple.COM> <10119@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> <36343@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Nov11.002535.21243@world.std.com> <255F14A9.16035@ateng.com>
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Lines: 43


From: chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg)
>Apparently Barry forgets all the answers about cluttered name spaces making
>the discovery of The Appropriate Group For An Article even more difficult.
>
>Memory loss can be such a tragedy.

Apparently Chip hasn't looked at his active file or .newsrc in a few
years, I have 976 groups listed. I fear the horse has long since left
the barn.

If you think you're solving the problem of discovering the appropriate
group by trying to keep it down to around 1000 I think you're deluded.

Do you buy the smallest theasurus or dictionary you can find on the
assumption that it will be easier to find words in it?

An entirely different mechanism is needed to help people find what
they're looking for, the days of a manageable list of groups has long
since past and adding another coupla hundred this year (or not) won't
make one whit of difference to the problem you describe.

Working from polemics rather than facts is also a tragedy.

>There is some wisdom here; but multiplying group creations until they become
>worthless is *not* the answer.

That's a bit of hyperbole. The Library of Congress probably has
hundreds of thousands of subject classifications and I haven't heard
anyone calling the nation's library systems useless. And until very
recently people didn't even have computers to find the subjects they
wanted, they did it with little cards in little drawers. Computers
actually seem to have knocked most catalogue systems down to
simplicity.

Just saying nice truisms like "umm, if there were too many then, er,
it would be CONFUSING" doesn't prove the point, it's just preaching to
a choir.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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