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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <1471@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 21:28:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1471
Posted: Tue Sep  3 21:28:32 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 07:06:08 EDT
References: <10220@ucbvax.ARPA> <764@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 28

In article <764@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes:

>I disagree.  The digests are all that make some groups tolerable.
>Instead of plowing through message after message (most of which
>will be useless at any given time) I can just scan the digest
>heading and frequently throw ALL those messages out at once without
>even hassling with them.  If by chance something worthwhile
>appears in the heading, I go down to that particular message
>and read it.  The percentage of messages that require replies
>(for any given individual reading news) is incredibly less than the
>number of "junk" articles that any particular person might
>choose to ignore.  I consider digests to be one of the more useful
>tools for cutting down on the amount of time required to wade
>through the muck in search of the gems.  Digests aren't perfect,
>but they sure help.

BUt but but

If you're using rn, you're already getting all these things WITHOUT the use
of digests.  You can ask it to list the articles by subject, you can follow
out subject lines, you can move around to particular articles at will....

My feeling is that digests are a liability for rn users.  They defeat all
the nice tools that rn uses to organize articles for you.  It's also
apparent that readnews and (possibly) vnews people need digests to get these
aids.  So I guess I really don't have an answer for this.

Charley Wingate