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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc,news.software.b
Subject: Re: How long would it take to actually read all of news?
Message-ID: <954@looking.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 20:11:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: looking.954
Posted: Thu Sep 10 20:11:01 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 12:06:37 EDT
References: <1475@aramis.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27
Xref: utgpu news.groups:1397 news.misc:776 news.software.b:762

In article <1475@aramis.rutgers.edu> webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
>Many people seem to think that Usenet has grown too big to read.  I
>disagree.  So, I let 40 hours of news pile up unread and then sat down
>and timed myself reading it.

You disqualify yourself right here.  The mere fact that you would want
to try and read all of it, knowing it will take a few hours, removes you
from the category of people who claim that the net is too big to read.

Most people have other things to do, and consider the net as an extra
activity to be read if there is time.  I thought I read too much news back
when it was only 200K/day instead of the 3 megs/day it is now.

Almost nobody has 1 hour just to scan headers without actually getting any
reading done.  Or 1/2 hour per day.

----------
Now this isn't to say that better news reading software can't help
you read news faster.  I read news on a terminal that prints at
10,000 chars/second, and I find 4800 baud too slow these days.
I would like to be presented a menu of subjects, and click off the ones
I want with arrow keys or a mouse, and then see those articles.

But most of all nothing would substitute for good moderators, better
subject lines and more specific, lower volume newsgroups.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473