Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site nsc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!nsc!chuqui From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: keyword-based news (final comments! really!) Message-ID: <3253@nsc.UUCP> Date: Sat, 12-Oct-85 23:39:58 EDT Article-I.D.: nsc.3253 Posted: Sat Oct 12 23:39:58 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 14-Oct-85 04:45:50 EDT References: <3227@nsc.UUCP> <834@vortex.UUCP> Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Organization: Cultural Fugue, Ltd. Lines: 157 Keywords: blurfl, foobar, snafu, lauren, sillythighs Summary: Pulling out of the sideshow.... In article <834@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes: >I almost couldn't stop laughing here when I saw Chuqui's article >claiming "he didn't want to waste the network's time with point-by-point >refutations of arguments." Uh huh. He has always seemed perfectly >happy to post long point-by-point refutation articles when he thought >he had some valid way to argue. But hey, if he has nothing to say >on some of these points (whatever the reason), that's OK by me. My hope on going public with my NNTN project was to try to get some reasonable feedback. As seems to be typical of most of the network, and of Lauren in particular, all I've gotten are rather childish attempts at minimizing any attempt to do something positive for this beast we laughingly call a network. I'm now, thanks largely to the continuing attempt by Lauren to ridicule anything I say, quite sorry I ever opened my mouth to try to make this place better. If I continue on NNTN, and that is by no means sure, it'll be silently. If I have results I feel are promising, I'll bring them forward, but I'm no longer going to sit here and argue with braying idiots who think that facts are superfluous to their religious beliefs. I'll let my results, success or failure, speak for me in the future. I'm frankly tired of pretending to respect people who don't deserve respect, or wasting my time trying to hold a discussion with throwers of rotten tomatoes. If I want advice, I'll go ask a tree stump -- I think I'll get a LOT more information out of it that I get out of the idiots... Well, I'm now VERY sorry I made any public comment at all, because all it has done is give Lauren another topic to practice his petty character assasinations on me. Given five or six more years, he might even get them right. Lauren, I don't think it is any secret that we don't like each other. I'm rather proud to admit publicly that I don't like you. I also believe that technical discussions should be dealt with on a technical level, something you evidently haven't figured out. So, as my final posting on the subject, let me drop something down to your level and see if it sinks in..... *PPHHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTT* (I've been wanting to do that for over a year.... Ahhhhhh.......) Now that I've gotten my obligatory childish behavior out of the way, I'd also like to point out that when Lauren DOES decide to act mature, he has the technical knowledge to really help pull things together (stargate proves that point). I only wish he'd use his brain more often. A final boon to my erstwhile loyal opposition: Since I'm leaving National and the front line of the network, I'm also going to drop this discussion since it isn't going anywhere. Now that I've offended Lauren's manhood, he can post a followup ranting and raving at me, defend his ego, and since he will have gotten in the last word, believe that he won the argument. The least I can do for everything Lauren has done for me over the years.... Enjoy yourself, Lauren. You won't have to worry about arguing with facts for a while -- most people seem to enjoy raw emotional outbursts... Anyway, a few final points.... hopefully not in the massive copious detail Lauren seems to dislike (my apologies for that, but facts tend to take up space, and I like to have a basis in fact for my comments) >My arguments against keyword-based netnews are not new. I've pointed >out these same issues whenever this topic has appeared (and it has >appeared in the past, and has been argued about in netnews, long >before Chuqui appeared on the scene). Well, there is an implied "Chuqui's a young whippersnapper, listen to me because I've been solving these problems since he was in diapers" comment in there. Well, I could make a snide comment about old and senile hackers, but that doesn't contribute to the situation... I'll even agree that his arguments aren't new. Old arguments aren't neccessarily right, they're just old.... >I consider keyword-based netnews, >if implemented in the manner so far described, to be ANOTHER PROBLEM, >not a solution. My opinions regarding the way to solve our >existing problems are pretty well known, and I think that most >of the network knows how I personally am proceeding. I feel that >moderated groups and alternate services (e.g. Stargate) show the most >promise for providing useful services in the medium to long-run. Well, I have supported Stargate from day one, because I felt that it was something who's usefulness could only be proven by implementation and test. That was despite that fact that I personally (and until now, silently) feel that Stargate is dead wrong, and the chance of taking it into a full and useful production scheme the size of our current network is impossible. Even though I'm completely against Stargate, I believe that we can learn from our failures (or be pleased by our successes) and that we should carry forward and see what happens. Unfortunately, I seem to be unique in these thoughts, because the attitude of others is to stomp out anything that they don't personally agree with. Even if NNTN is a complete blowoff, we could learn something in the implementation that make whatever comes next, but Lauren and others seem to feel that if it isn't obviously perfect (by their frames of reference) in the first design discussions, it should simply be tossed away... >I feel that "solutions" that do not include some form of moderation >are stopgaps that will have no long-term usefulness as the network >continues to grow. I feel that "solutions" that DO include moderation may work on some nets, but won't work on USENET. You want a different net, fine, but I want the decision to read or not read an article in the hands of the reader. I CERTAINLY wouldn't want a newsgroup moderated by Lauren, if only because he and I disagree on everything and therefore the stuff I'd consider interesting wouldn't get in.... What we need to do is build a system that makes it easier to screen messages and less likely to mispost messages. The only person I really trust as moderator is me, and I wouldn't trust me as moderator for anyone else. The one thing I think we NEED to save if we want USENET to survive is the spontaneity, and stargate and other moderated schemes lose that. Without the ability to post without supervision, you no longer have USENET, and I think you lose a lot of the appeal and wonder that makes this net as much fun as it is. (wow, Lauren and I disagree again. Suprise suprise). Despite that, I've been happy to try to move stargate forward and kept my disagreements to myself -- let a project stand or fall on its own merits... Altruistic? hell, no. Just interested in getting a better net, and treating people right. Ideas well ahead of their times, it seems. >Keyword systems do nothing to help control our traffic and cost >problems. In fact, they make it MORE likely that discussions will >mushroom off in bizarre directions (no pun intended) and make it HARDER >for individual sites to control what they wish to send or receive. Who says? NNTN isn't nearly at the detail of design to say one way or another. Why can't we simply set things up so that specific keywords don't get forwarded? (things like flame, bizarre, jokes, lauren, whatever...) That is actually BETTER than the current situation because you exclude anything posted to a specific keyword. Now, if something is cross posted to an excluded group and a group you do get, you get the posting, which means that turning off a group doesn't do as well as you would hope -- especially with heavily cross posted groups like net.flame. >Keyword systems don't even necessarily help find items of interest, >due to the four error modalities already discussed in >previous messages. I don't see that this is better or worse with keywords than it is with the current situation. It is just as difficult to track down the appropriate place for things with the current group structure as it is with keywords. Keywords may well not be better than newsgroups, but they also aren't worse, and they give you a level of flexibility that is difficult to design into our current structure. Well, have at me, Lauren. I've been looking forward to tossing a posting at you like the one's you've been lobbing at me for a long time. I don't expect it to be very productive, but I certainly feel better for it... Hope you don't mind a little of your own medicine... Tired of trying to act like a gentleman in a room full of pigs, call me: Ishmael -- :From the caverns of the Crystal Cave: Chuq Von Rospach Currently: nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid}!nsc!chuqui Soon to be: ..!sun! Our time is past -- it is a time for men, not magic. Come, let us leave this world to the usurpers and rest our weary bones....