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From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Keyword based news
Message-ID: <1793@hao.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 15:47:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: hao.1793
Posted: Mon Oct  7 15:47:32 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 06:44:11 EDT
References: <16460@watmath.UUCP> <1419@utcsri.UUCP> <132@mck-csc.UUCP> <3189@nsc.UUCP> <265@ukecc.UUCP> <1787@hao.UUCP> <434@looking.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 46

> To Greg: The whole point of keywords is to allow greater user selectivity.
> For optimal use, you need poster-pays news with "collect" features.

  This will effectively kill 95% of the net. I do not have the authority
to spend HAO's money for this type of thing, and I'm not sure I would
even if I COULD. I'd have to justify every single article to management,
whereas now we only have to justify the net as a whole. As for spending
my own money, I haven't got it. If that's what you expected, then you've
just turned the net into a much smaller group of computer aristocrats.
We already have that type of thing, it's called CompuServe. I think 95% of
the users would drop off the net if they had to pay to post articles. That
would make it NOT WORTH IT to pay to stay on the net.  The variety of people
posting here is one thing that makes it unique. Surely we can come up with
a solution that won't eliminate that. I'll wait to see how Chuqui's new system
works. I'm skeptical, but if he proves me wrong, so much the better. I do
acknowledge him for at least making an attempt to DO something.
  If you are talking about paying with "funny money", i.e. some sort of
accounting system, I don't think that's practical, and besides, it could
probably be gotten around by hacker/forgers anyway. I could just create 20
user ID's for myself here. (Obviously, I'm not the only one with that
privilege, nor WOULD I be likely to do so, but no doubt SOMEONE who felt
unfairly censored would do it).

> That's why moderators who select keywords for you, automated or living, would
> be useful.
  
  Two problems: 1) Who is going to pay them, or who will be willing to 
volunteer for such a monumental task, and 2) What if I don't like a 
particular moderator (and vice versa) and he labels all my opinions as
"flames", and so no one reads them? What recourse would I have?

  I have no objection to new ideas, but I really think this one is impractical.
If someone (like Chuq) comes up with such a system and it works, proving
me wrong, fine; but right now I'm not convinced that keyword news would do
ANYTHING to alleviate our current problems, and might even make some of them
worse.

--Greg
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!noao | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!noao}
       		        !hao!woods

CSNET: woods@NCAR  ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY

"I don't know, but I've been told, it's hard to run with the weight of gold
On the other hand I've heard it said, it's just as hard with the weight of lead"