Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!ai-lab!life.ai.mit.edu!guest From: guest@geech.ai.mit.edu (Guest Account) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: [comp.archives] comp.archives disappears for a while Message-ID: Date: 26 Apr 91 16:58:42 GMT References: <1991Apr26.033504.15992@ox.com> Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Followup-To: comp.sources.d Organization: Guest at MIT Lines: 26 In-reply-to: emv@msen.com's message of 26 Apr 91 03:35:04 GMT In article <1991Apr26.033504.15992@ox.com> emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, moderator) writes: Indeed there are any number of things that would be awful nice to have but which would take a lot of work. *It's rapidly approaching the stage where it's going to take a serious infusion of technology to keep comp.archives running.* I really want to end up with something much more generalizable, something that you could say to it "look for all of the interesting articles about frame relay and whatever related subjects on whatever lists, and just show me the interesting ones", and it would find them for you; the newsreaders of the 1990's have huge piles of news to weed through and only the puniest of newsgroups to split them down with. Thus, I see no choice but to try and force the issue and say "if the technology doesn't get better within a year, I give up, I can't keep up with it all." How about a different approach? Why not get people in the habit of posting all articles about the availability of software to one group. Say for instance a group named comp.sources.available. The posters would have to follow your guidelines. You could then run some software which automatically crossposts to the relevant newsgroups. That way you don't have to search the entire news database and in addition more people will be informed because of the wider crossposting. The downside of this idea is that it would require a possibly painful transition period in which people get used to remembering to post to the group instead of following up the current article directly.