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From: fair@ucbvax.ARPA (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.notes
Subject: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <10220@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 10:28:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10220
Posted: Wed Aug 28 10:28:16 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 10:33:01 EDT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 39
Xref: watmath net.news:3857 net.notes:246

Digested articles, of the form we see in fa.human-nets, mod.std.c,
mod.unix and fa.telecom are bad for the USENET, because they don't
allow the user to choose what he wants to read. Netnews is geared to
performing actions on single messages at a time. A digest breaks this,
because there is but one Message-ID per digest; one Subject per digest
(usually just the name of the digest and a volume number; of little use
for determining the actual content of the message); and one author (or
submitter) per digest, BUT *many* messages per digest!

This breaks our software in the following ways:

	Can't respond to individual items in a digest;
		only to the digest as a whole

	Don't automatically get mail replies sent to the right place

	Don't automatically get the right subject

	Don't get the ability to refer to previous items in the
		on the specific topic of one subject (i.e. no
		References: lines).

	Can't get a table of contents until you start reading the digest
		(and if you do get one at the top of the digest,
		you can't select which messages in the digest that you
		want to read).

Therefore, I propose that all moderators immediately stop digesting
items for submission to mod.* groups.

To clarify, I am not suggesting that we abandon moderation (e.g. the
selection of which articles to post by a designated person). I am
suggesting that the practice of clumping all submitted messages
together be stopped, because it defeats some important features of
netnews.

Comments?

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU