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Posting-Version: version B UNSW 1.1 19 Sep 1984; site darwin.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcs!darwin!ian
From: ian@darwin.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.notes
Subject: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <54@darwin.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 03:01:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: darwin.54
Posted: Tue Sep 24 03:01:52 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Sep-85 06:27:25 EDT
References: <10381@ucbvax.ARPA> <3274@nsc.UUCP> <698@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Distribution: net.news
Organization: darwin!ian systems, toronto, canada
Lines: 26
Xref: utcs net.news:3533 net.news.notes:17

>> 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,

NO NO! Please don't put all that news in my $MAIL file! It's all I can
do to read all the mail that people send me and still get some work done!

On the other hand, using the same set of tools for reading/writing
mail and news makes perfect sense.

Actually, I've just switched over to the _mh_ mail system (the ``one
true way'' to read mail on UNIX, by the way), in whose
terminology the news could go into a `folder' that you only read
when you have time.  Even so, the saving throw of news has recently
been that you can ignore it (and if you're lucky some of the really
useless articles will expire along with the three that you really
need and thus have to restore from tape... :=} ).

Be careful of overloading your inbox when trying to escape from
information overload.


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