Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Take a sniff of Gnews
Message-ID: <47@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 88 20:34:26 GMT
References: <7928@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <25590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <40@ncar.ucar.edu> <7961@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 75

In article <7961@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (a small gnews-ance) writes:
>In article <40@ncar.ucar.edu>, woods@ncar (Greg Woods) writes:
>>   Yes, there are. My question is: how useful is that information? I say:
>>not very.
>
>And I say: nobody knows.

  In practice of course you are right. However, when it comes to an
officially-supported version of news software, the two are equivalent. 
Before I would advocate making such a system part of the standard news
software, I need to be convinced that it works and that it does some good.

>Say then requiring "abortion", "fetus", "person" to show up four times
>between them--and not quoted as I'm doing now either--would be a better
>requirement.  I'm not trying to write any definitive rules right now.
   
   But sooner or later you have to. My point is that I do not believe that
you can do so in any reliable way. Convince me I'm wrong (I am keeping an
open mind) and I'll believe your proposal is a "good thing".

>The user is free to answer "no" to the "do we understand each other?"
>question, ie, "No, Mr Computer Sir, you didn't understand me.  Shut up
>and let me post."

   Look at how many complaints we already get about the 50% rule. Of course
I am in favor of the 50% rule, but not everyone agrees with me :-) This is
more of the same, except that the heuristics are much more difficult to
define in any meaningful way.

>I see that you are not rebutting these [fairy] stories, but are pointing out an
>external difficulty.  Is this a concession, then, that you agree that such
>fairy stories, if implemented, would have a beneficial effect?  

  Well, there were over 100 lines of "fairy stories" and I only have
so much time to read news :-) I personally think they might be beneficial,
but only if they are kept up-to-date. I really don't like the idea of hard-
coding things for individual newsgroups into the posting software. It
makes it much harder to change the newsgroup structure (including such
things as renaming groups or deleting groups) and I think we need to
retain maximum flexibility in this area.

>And there's no point in trying it out if the re-
>action from the backbone is a loud "hell no".  Remember junker?

  Unless I explicitly say so, these are just my PERSONAL OPINIONS and do
NOT, repeat NOT, represent any official position of the backbone. We 
frequently have disagreements among ourselves, but the minority usually
agrees to go along with the majority because it is the only thing standing
in the way of having the net degenerate into COMPLETE chaos (as an example,
I was opposed to letting the unauthorized creation of rec.music.beatles
stand because I thought it set a very bad precedent. I was overruled because
most of the rest didn't think it was worth making a fuss over. Looks like
the same thing has happened again with comp.sys.amiga.tech, which I am not
carrying on my site but which someone continues to feed to me, but that is
a flame for a different discussion). 
  And as for "hell no", I'm not ruling anything out completely. I just have
to be convinced it will work and do some good before I would advocate having
it included in the official news software distribution.

>Huh?  This makes no sense.  Why is keeping up to date for one kind of pro-
>gram any harder than any other?

  All sorts of reasons, including such things as frequency and magnitude
of changes. One reason people can get away with maintaining news as a 10th
priority is that the software is stable and requires relatively few changes.

  Naturally, if you want to try something like this out on your own site,
no one is stopping you. In general, I am against keyword-based news systems
because they sound great in theory, but I don't believe they will work in
practice. You're right in saying I don't KNOW they won't work, but you don't
know they WILL. If someone implements one that works, maybe they can
convince me I'm wrong, but until then I still think keyword news is an
unworkable idea.

--Greg