Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!calgary!cpsc!freedman
From: freedman@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Daniel Freedman)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Finding a needle in a haystack (was: future public nets)
Message-ID: <420@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
Date: 28 Dec 88 22:24:07 GMT
References: <8812262241.AA24943@snark.UUCP>
Sender: news@calgary.UUCP
Lines: 37

In article <8812262241.AA24943@snark.UUCP>, eric@snark.UUCP writes:
> >Have you tried the "vn" newsreader?  It presents a screenful of message
> >titles, and you just pick the ones you want.  It makes picking just a few
> >articles out of a huge batch about as quick as it can be.
> > ... (deleted)
> 
> All the interactive readers in 3.0 news (including vnews) will have this
> capability, it is already implemented and has been working fine
> for months.

Has anyone thought of allowing news readers to do the following things:

1) view all new messages that have the same subject together, rather than
   having to juggle many subjects in his head while reading news.

2) easily apply the 'n' function to not only the current article, but also
   to all followups to it.

It seems that these ideas are basically an extension of the current
newsgroup organization.  That is, currently, one can view all messages
in a newsgroup consecutively, and can choose to ignore all further
messages in a newsgroup.  The above new functions extend this from the
newsgroup level down to a new level, perhaps to be called the "chain"
level.  A chain would be a "group" of messages that were derived from
a common ancestor.  Currently, news is completely unmanagable.  I know
many people who won't read news because the volume is too high.  Just
as having topic-oriented newsgroups is a volume managing facility, so
would having articles organized into chains.  Multics Forum has this
facility (although you have to type "swn seen [aref]" to get it! ;-)).

Sorry if this has all been hashed out before.


Dan Freedman
University of Calgary Computer Science Department
2500 University Drive N.W.			      freedman@cpsc.UCalgary.CA
Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4	                   ...!alberta!calgary!freedman