Xref: utzoo news.software.b:7834 comp.groupware:561 comp.infosystems:251 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.groupware,comp.infosystems Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <1991May20.202439.4635@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 20 May 91 20:24:39 GMT References: <1991May18.122602.12184@mp.cs.niu.edu> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 49 In article mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >> I don't. Good work, Henry and Geoff, in improving quality. > >"Improving quality"? > >I spend sometimes *literally hours* writing stuff to post to Usenet, stuff >which I know people like to read and which I get fan mail for, C News throws >all that away silently because of a missing comma in the news header, and you >tell me it's "improving quality"? If your articles are all that valuable, you surely kept a copy, and can repost. >What the hell kind of quality improvement is that? The "quality improvement" means that the next time someond drops 10 megabytes of really stale news on the net, I won't have to waste a lot of time trying to scrub it out of my tight disk space. Who knows? With the time I save, maybe I will have more time left over to read your posting. If the price I pay is to occasionally miss a current article with a syntactically invalid date, it is price well worth paying. >You may not like my postings; you may not even read the newsgroups I >generally post in. But to say that silently throwing away everything I write >is a "quality improvement" is grossly offensive. I didn't see alt.flame in >the newsgroups line. I was referring to the quality of the news software, not the quality of news articles. I have not seen any improvement in the latter. >This is truly bizarre. You seem to be saying that the form of publication of >news is more important than its content. If you want to describe it that way. I happen to think that some of the headers are part of the content. I'll tell you what! Why don't you set up an alternate news system where all the processing is done manually. Since a human is involved, syntactic errors can more easily be corrected. In any case, since it is not automated, there will be no software dependence on the exact form of the headers, so you can do what you like with them. I bet that the propogation with this manual system will be far poorer than with an automated system. If you want the benefits of automation, you have to live with some of the imposed rigidity. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940