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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!inc
From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.notes
Subject: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <698@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 18:11:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: tpvax.698
Posted: Fri Sep 20 18:11:19 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 04:47:54 EDT
References: <10381@ucbvax.ARPA> <3274@nsc.UUCP>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 50
Xref: watmath net.news:3957 net.news.notes:13


Chuq Von Rospach {nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA} recently wrote:

> One of the things that looks very attractive to me right now is
> disassociating the concept of a 'newsgroup' from the user interface
> completely. The ONLY thing the user should see is the subject line.

As one user, I object to this. I make my 'n' decisions at least partly on
the sender, and in some cases the originating site.
 
> One thing you can then do is define a default distribution to a required
> keyword as well. net.flame could translate into {region,flame} and
> net.unix-wizards would translate into {world,unix|expert} or some such.
> Newsgroups can then be mapped into the required keyword set, and the
> filtering mechanism will do that part of the work for you. You no longer
> have to worry about seeing the same 'M'arked message popping up in both
> net.news and net.news.adm because you don't see the groups anymore, you
> just deal with the messages.

Part of this I can go for -- it provides one way out of the wilderness of
cross-posted messages. If I read it in net.flame, there is no need for
the same message to be presented to me in net.nlang.celts. HOWEVER, I do
like having my messages grouped by my different interests. I have fun
"popping in and out" of various groups just to check out what they're
discussing. If the "newsgroup" concept disappears, it is my opinion that
the only option left is mailing lists, a clearly inefficient solution to the
"grouping by interest" dilemna.

 
> The other things I've found about the user interface is that there is no
> reason why news and mail ought to have separate programs/interfaces.
> Whether the message is news or mail should be part of the
> filtering/priotizing setup, but is irrelevant to 99.44% of the user
> interface. A new filtering bit would be whether it is public or private
> based, but whatever interface deals with news should deal with email as
> well.

YES, YES, YES!! Not only should mail and news be part of the same interface,
but it would be nice if it also fired up a background process to get the
editor of choice fired up and ready. As things are here, it's a pain to
always wait for 2 minutes for the editor to load for each reply, followup or
new posting.

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-- 
 Gary Benson  *  John Fluke Mfg. Co.  *  PO Box C9090  *  Everett WA  *  98206
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