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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.notes
Subject: Re: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <5156@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 12:36:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.5156
Posted: Fri Aug 30 12:36:37 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 04:37:57 EDT
References: <10220@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: MIT Lusers and Hosers Inc., Cambridge, Ma.
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Xref: watmath net.news:3866 net.notes:252

> From: fair@ucbvax.ARPA (Erik E. Fair)

> 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!

I was under the impression that readnews breaks digests into single
replyable articles.  As long as the moderator puts a From: and Subject:
line into each digested article, I don't see how there can be any
problems.  In addition, they can put in Message-IDs also, although I
don't know how much good that will do for your general-purpose news
system, perhaps there are some fancier news systems out there that can
cross-reference on an arbitrary Message-ID?

> This breaks our software in the following ways:

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

You can (with digesting in readnews -- is it in vnews yet?) -- see above.

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

If all moderators put in replyable paths including well-known hosts, or
at the least put in (or have the submitters include) a path to their
machine including well-known hosts, mail replies have as much a chance
of going to the right place as if they were posted singularly.  I've
replied to news articles and been rejected through news-only hosts -- I
was usually better off finding my own path to the machine (but those
stories are better left in net.mail).

>	Don't automatically get the right subject

Again, each digested article should have its own 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).

Maybe there could be Message-ID's in each digested article and
references in the moderated posting to those ID's?

>	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).

I thought that in readnews after the digest is broken you could select
which ones you wanted to read.

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

I propose that we include my suggestions (or at least talk about them),
maybe some additional cross-referencing and timestamping of digested
articles can be made a part of the news software.
-- 
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
for they are subtle and quick to anger.

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu