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From: mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: News, Notes, and Reality
Message-ID: <20719@styx.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jun-86 18:58:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: styx.20719
Posted: Mon Jun 30 18:58:04 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Jul-86 04:05:51 EDT
References: <2176@cbosgd.UUCP> <33400012@ndm20>
Reply-To: mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch)
Distribution: net
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 86

In article <33400012@ndm20> tp@ndm20 writes:
> . . .
> To mcb@styx, the title of my note was Response 5 of 5 when I wrote it
> on my system.  To bad yours can't connect it to the base  note of the
> discussion.  [...]

I wish somebody would take Mr. Poot by the hand and explain to him
(and others) how Usenet really works. Behind all the news reading
interfaces there are actual messages whizzing around between thousands
of pairs of systems. These messages have a certain format, which is
described in RFC850, Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages (Mark
Horton, June 1983). This isn't a formal Internet standard, but it's as
close to one as we have.

In RFC850 we find the following, with respect to the "Subject:" header:

	2.1.6  Subject   The  Subject  line  (formerly    "Title")
	tells  what the article is about.  It should be suggestive
	enough of the contents of the article to enable  a  reader
	to  make  a  decision whether to read the article based on
	the  subject  alone.   If  the  article  is  submitted  in
	response  to another article (e.g., is a  "followup")  the
	default subject should  begin  with  the  four  characters
	"Re: "   and the References line is required.    (The user
	might wish to edit the subject of the  followup,  but  the
	default should begin with  "Re: ".)

Unfortunately, notes does not cope with this, since users have no
way to see or edit the Subject: header to make sure it contains
something useful. Notes seems to think that all netnews discussions
consist of a "base note" and a number of replies; unfortunately, that
paradigm does not translate well to an environment where

	1) There are MANY readers and thus many nuances of subject
	   even in a given discussion thread, and people like to
	   edit the subject line to reflect reality;

	2) Delivery of messages is completely asynchronous; replies
	   may arrive before their predecessors; and

	3) Newsgroups overlap in readership and content; cross-posting
	   (which cannot be done in notes) allows discussions to span
	   different audiences, bring in new readers, avoid needless 
	   duplication, and when necessary, painlessly migrate a topic
	   to a more appropriate newsgroup.

To briefly answer Mr. Poot's comments, my news system cannot connect
his response to a "base note", because there is no such thing as a
base note. "Base notes" are an artifact of the notes environment, are
local to systems and their connected notes sites, and have no place in 
the transport layer of netnews. (Rn can easily group together
identical subject lines to be read in sequence; I do this all the
time.) My question to Mr. Poot is: in a community that uses subject
lines to tell what messages are about, why can't your notes system
generate a useful one?

[Mr. Poot has asserted three times that the "Orphaned Response" bug is
"fixed". Well, considering that "Re: Orphaned Response" is the subject
of the article to which I am replying, I can only state that I'll
consider it fixed when I no longer see such subject lines.]

> [...] I hate to be  guilty of  prejudice on the
> basis  of association,  but I  have a  hard time  paying attention to
> anyone at styx saying anything about notes, considering the amount of
> bias involved (see the quote in  my previous  article.   It came from
> that site).  By the way, 2 occurances [sic] of the line eater  may be rare,
> but it is not gone.  

No need to apologize. You are undoubtedly referring to the remarks
made by Erik Fair about notes. Erik and I are news/mail co-administrators 
at styx, and naturally we share many of the same views about news, notes, 
and the internetworked community. Do you read many of the "mod" groups
that are gatewayed from ARPANET mailing lists? If so, you may not be
aware that he has probably done more than anyone on the net to get the
gateway(s) up and running and keep them running. If you'd like to
thank him for his efforts, you may send mail to fair@lll-tis-b.arpa
(styx!fair). 

Of course I'm biased -- when notes can give its users 
a few simple Usenet services like being able to produce a relevant
subject line, enforcing a proper qualified-domain From: line, and
being able to cross-post, I'm sure my bias will fade away.

Michael C. Berch
ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA
UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb