Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Just how useful is crossposting?
Message-ID: <50036@looking.on.ca>
Date: 20 Nov 89 02:21:09 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca> <1989Nov14.195710.11774@NCoast.ORG> <48887@looking.on.ca> <1989Nov17.231128.20369@rpi.edu> <1989Nov18.165018.11206@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <14930@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 44
Class: discussion

In article <14930@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
>A compromise is possible: keep the root ID and the last up-to-N parent ID's.

This, and other variants are workable to a degree.  If we keep enough IDs in
the message, and mark the fact that we have done a deletion, then it would
be possible for rnews to build the full tree as articles come in, in
a special database of the trees.

It's bulky, but it can be done.  It would only fail if we lose almost the whole
chain.  Otherwise enough searching should allow us to rebuild it.

It's slow and bulky, but it's better than keeping just the parent, where
we get completely screwed if the parent never arrives or arrives much
later.

Actually, an 'ideal' solution is to somehow spot critical nodes in the
tree.  If we can identify critcal nodes (special message-id syntax) then
it is possible to build a tree using only those.

Spotting such nodes is difficult.  Naturally a first step is to have the
posting program, "Is this a reply to the actual article you followed up,
a comment on the general topic, or the beginning of a new related topic?"

But even this isn't enough, because often a new tangential topic will begin
without the poster knowing it.   Software can spot this by noting the
followup count to a given article, but it can only spot it after the fact.
It's hard to change things after the fact, even with a fancy control message,
and it may be too late for most readers in any case.  (Clearly for the many
who followed up.)

On some systems they make "creating a new discussion topic" an explicit thing
you can do.  In some ways it is like USENET, where you can either use
postnews or follow-up, but for some reason the distinction blurs on usenet.

The now defunct "THE SOURCE" online service had an interesting package
called PARTI[cipate].   Like Genie, CIS, USENET etc. you could either follow-up
or post a topic-starting article.  But they had the ability to hang a topic
off of any other topic, thus creating a tree.   And they had some staff
keep track of global topic areas and keep them understandable.

I never got to see it much, as they cancelled the Source 2 months after I
joined it!
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473