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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: keyword-based news
Message-ID: <825@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 13:29:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.825
Posted: Fri Oct  4 13:29:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 15:15:47 EDT
References: <3210@nsc.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 49

First of all, Chuqui, I noticed that you ignored the second part of
my argument, where I pointed out how limited or poor keyword choices
result in many MISSED articles.  Ya see, that's the problem with 
keyword systems.  Put in too many keywords, or "inappropriate" ones, and
you get all sorts of mismatches.  Put in too few, or (once again)
"inappropriate," ones and you miss most of the articles you really wanted
to see.  And both these points apply both to the person choosing the 
keywords to go with the article AND to the person searching for articles
of interest.  In other words, there are four different modalities
of screwup in such systems, plus combinations, of course.

Ya' want something with greater applicability to netnews?  OK, try
DIALOG or any of the other large commercial database systems where
keywords are assigned on a carefully organized basis, and are kept
fairly limited to (supposedly) *try* avoid many mismatches.  They still
are horribly mucked up.  It takes a great deal of real skill to choose
correct keywords (either when posting an article or searching for one).
And even with skill and practice, you end up with piles of junk
AND missing items of real interest.

Many of the commercial services have people who do nothing all day
but read articles and spend a great deal of time assigning keywords
that will hopefully maximize correct matches.  You know what?  You
STILL get floods of useless matches (you'd be amazed) and you still
miss 80% of the stuff you really wanted.  And that's with pro's spending
lots of time choosing appropriate words, not some frazzled netnews
user trying to dash something off in a hurry.

I'm sorry Chuqui, but I've used lots of keyword systems (both commercial
and non-commercial in all sorts of different applications) and I consider
them to be a real mess.  Even very elaborate, sophisticated systems 
are a royal pain to use.  And most of these systems don't have the
additional consideration of trying to decide what material they
can afford to pass on to other sites, and of avoiding mushrooming
of discussions into all sorts of sidetracks that can massively
increase costs.  In other words, keyword systems tend not to work
very well even in centralized environments where costs are not
a significant factor.  In our distributed environment, keywords
cannot replace newsgroups without causing an immense amount of
waste, hassle, and increased costs.  Depending on keywords also brings
forth the problems of unwanted and missed articles discussed above.
In a time when many sites are faced with either limiting traffic or 
dropping off the net entirely, keyword systms, apart from the hassles they 
cause the users ("pros" as well as casual users) could make attempts at
thoughtful traffic limitations impossible, and the result could
be the loss of hub sites and many other sites as the traffic continues
to grow.

--Lauren--


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