Xref: utzoo news.admin:14633 news.software.b:7953 comp.groupware:573
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!dkuug!ruc.dk!david
From: david@gorm.ruc.dk (David Stodolsky)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b,comp.groupware
Subject: news.feedback? (Was: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <1991May24.162137.5615@gorm.ruc.dk>
Date: 24 May 91 16:21:37 GMT
References: <282FD655.3D2A@tct.com> <5ukZ24w164w@mantis.co.uk> <1991May18.192836.137@micrognosis.co.uk> <1991May19.102741.24411@wimsey.bc.ca> <1991May21.155936.9037@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Roskilde University, Denmark
Lines: 58

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

>Once and for all:  under no circumstances, none whatsoever, is C News ever
>going to report problems to a remote site via mail.  There is simply no
>way of making sure that more-or-less innocent people won't get inundated
>with immense volumes of costly mail.  People who make suggestions along
>those lines can forget it; they have not thought the problem through;
>we have.  We aren't going to do it.  The subject is closed.

Yes, but the problem remains. There are several related problems both of a
technical and social type. (I am responding to this because it was crossposted
to comp.groupware - actually it was some earlier articles in the thread).

Even if C News did report problems by email, it would not solve a situation 
in which postings were not propagating, but appeared normally on the posting 
host. This happened to me last year. The defect was undiscovered for two months 
at a large site! I have also seen posts that propogate, but only in a limited
way. The question is not whether C News is broken. The net is broken, to some
degree, all the time. Technical problems will not be fixed unless people find
out about them.

The person who most wants to find out whether a post is propagating is the
author. Is there a way to close the loop so an author knows if articles are 
propagated, and more important read?

Lets say, we creat a newsgroup called news.feedback (this is not really the 
best name). When a news reading program encounters an article it generateds a
record like:

:Article-ID Action.

For example:
282FD655.3D2A@tct.com Kill.

If the person reads the header or the article, additional fields can be added.
The record might look like this:

282FD655.3D2A@tct.com Read Agree

At the completion of the news reading session the software posts the records
showing actions and reactions to articles encountered in news.feedback. 
These posts would be in a highly compressed form, not intended for human
consumption directly.

It can be argued that this would generate too much traffic, but plenty of 
traffic is already generated by people saying, "Yes, I agree." A compressed
response like the above would generate about the same level of traffic. 
This doesnot suggest that an independently operating program generates traffic. 
The user must invoke the newsreading software before anything happens. 
There are reasons to think that overall traffic would be reduced. 
Quality would be improved if it was done right.

Are there any obvious defects with this idea? 
-- 
David S. Stodolsky                Messages: + 45 46 75 77 11 x 24 41
Department of Computer Science                 Tel: + 45 31 95 92 82
Bldg. 20.1, Roskilde University Center        Internet: david@ruc.dk
Post Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark        Fax: + 45 46 75 74 01