Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Just how useful is crossposting?
Message-ID: <49591@looking.on.ca>
Date: 18 Nov 89 18:08:01 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca> <1989Nov14.195710.11774@NCoast.ORG> <48887@looking.on.ca> <1989Nov17.231128.20369@rpi.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 58
Class: discussion

Yes, it may not seem necessary to keep around the whole references chain.
But if you don't, it requires a tremendous amount of work on the part
of the rnews program or newsreader to rebuild it.

The main use of References, as I see it, is not just to allow one to
move 'up' to the parent of an article.  While that is a valid use, a far
more useful facility is the ability to deal with usenet as a series of
message trees.

If you want to deal with usenet as a series of trees, you can either
represent the tree in the article, or you can build the tree.

You can either build the tree as the articles come in, in the rnews
process, or you can try to build the tree in the reader.

Building it in the reader is so slow as to be almost pointless.   But
building it in the rnews program also slows that down -- even more than the
reader, which at least is probably already dealing with a pile of articles
in the same group.

If you build the tree at rnews time, you end up using most of the disk
space.  If you don't use up that disk space, then when the root of the
tree expires, the most important info about the tree structure is erased.

I am beginning to think the References line can be the most valuable header
line in a USENET article.   Nobody uses it yet, but I have written some
test software to use it, and if you ignore the broken reference lines out
there now, the result is WOW!  It's a whole new network.

I am seriously thinking of expanding this into a tree based newsreader.
But if we are going to add deliberately broken references lines to the
problem of the accidentally broken ones we have now, that could be scuttled.

-------

I already have (and sell) a tool that does limited tree-based manipulation.
(Or rather, can do just about anything, and using the trees is one obvious
application of it.)   With such a tool, if one subtree wanders off into
puns, or point by point rebuttal-wars, you can just prune that subtree, and
still track exactly the parts of the discussion you think are valuable.

This is more and more important as the net gets bigger.

The only problem is the broken lines.  I prune a subtree, or more often
a whole tree, and it keeps coming back when people break the references
line to disconnect their article from the node that was pruned.  As I
pointed out recently, "Results of sci.aquaria" came back *10* times, because
Richard Sexton says, "I remove the references line because it clutters my
screen."

RN kill files have the same problem in reverse.  While they can only kill
entire trees, they do not use the references line and thus don't get bothered
when it is broken.   But if the subject changes (as it usually should as
most threads wander or become more specific) RN shows it to you again and
again.

-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473