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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!cit-vax!mangler
From: mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (System Mangler)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: RN wishlist
Message-ID: <2481@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sun, 26-Apr-87 05:33:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.2481
Posted: Sun Apr 26 05:33:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Apr-87 23:14:01 EDT
References: <862@chinet.UUCP> <522@omen.UUCP> <18445@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1568@munnari.oz>
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 35
Summary: digests

The primary impetus for this site joining Usenet was that I was
sick of digests.

I used to get Unix-wizards by ARPA mail, and that was ok.  Most articles
I would read once and discard, keeping the good ones for later.  I could
skip over long articles, and stop reading after any article, without
losing my place.  When it became a digest, I was presented with 1000
lines to read (without skipping) in one sitting, and if I wanted to
come back to any article, I had to go through the whole digest.
At 1200 baud.  (I read news over breakfast - it sure beats the back
of the cereal box).  I learned to detest digests so much that I got us
onto Usenet, against everybody's recommendations, just to avoid them.

In article <1568@munnari.oz>, kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes:
> readnews does a fairly good job of handling them.

I use 2.10.3 readnews, and it does not.  It has simplistic notions
of what starts an article, and is often fooled.  There is no reply
or followup command.  There is no erase (mark unread) command.
The save command doesn't properly interpret $NEWSBOX.  The only
thing it provides is moving around - something any text editor
can probably do better.

> I would hate to see RISKS or a few of the others split, SUN-SPOTS
> and a bunch of others like that I wouldn't mind at all.

SUN-SPOTS is the worst.  It has a delay measured in weeks, making
discussion impossible.	(Which is probably the main purpose of
digests).  Most of each digest is requests for information, with
few articles offering any answers, and typically those have already
appeared in other newsgroups.  This is quality?

Sign me up, Eric.  Death to digests!

Don Speck   speck@vlsi.caltech.edu  {seismo,rutgers,ames}!cit-vax!speck