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From: hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: keyword-based news (final comments! really!)
Message-ID: <580@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 22:17:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.580
Posted: Tue Oct 15 22:17:57 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 05:33:20 EDT
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Organization: NC State Univ.
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> Upon reflection, I suspect that the biggest problem is that many
> persons are simply not familar with the work and problems already
> done in the areas of query/response and keyword systems.  It isn't
> as if it's a new invention.  Such systems have existed for quite a long
> time, and a considerable body of published work exists that clearly
> point out the positive and negative aspects of such systems.
> 
> ...  I'll just add that virtually all "successful"
> keyword-based systems have a central authority that controls keyword
> use.  Often this authority actually chooses the keywords, or else
> "corrects" poor user keyword choices before letting articles enter the
> database.  Often official keyword lists are also published or made otherwise
> available so that users will see what sorts of words will appear and 
> thusly allow intelligent usage of keywords on the part of both posters
> and readers of articles.

  Let me suggest something that each person can experience.  Go to your
university or company library and talk to the reference (or other
appropriate) librarian about doing a computer based search of some
bibliographic database in a field in which you have an interest.  Choose
a topic with which you are familiar so you will be able to estimate
what percentage of the material you get is undesired, and what percent
of the literature which is relevant doesn't show up in answer to your
request.
  You'll probably have to sit down with pages of rules and keywords,
and with help, and with several iterations you may very well get what
you know is a good answer.  (To be reasonable about this, you have to
choose a *topic* that has some coherence but is not too specific.  It
is easy to say "Give me all articles about unix", or "give me all the
articles authored by xyz since 1980".  I'm thinking more of the type of
topic on which you would actually be doing research - e.g., comparative
performance of different datacom network architectures.
  What keywords would one use for that?  "data communication" would
include much of what you want, and a *ton* of other things.  How about
anything with "queue" or "queueing" as a keyword.  Whoops, look at all
that telephony and industrial engineering stuff.  Let's add star, ring,
..., whoops again- lets qualify them with "data communication", whoops,
we lost many articles which were so obviously on data communications,
but were labeled "computer communications", or whatever.
  Last time I did a search, I was given a *book* of keywords, and was
told that authors had been *required* to describe their research 
using those (and only those.)  Therefore, I could only request from
that book, along with operators to allow generalizations like other
endings.
  After you have gone through a few non-trivial searches, then let's
continue this discussion.
--henry schaffer
Disclaimer: I really don't want to get into the ad hominem aspects of
this discussion, and refuse to comment directly on what view(s) I
personally favor.