Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!um-math!emv
From: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Article Classification is the key to solving USENET problems.
Message-ID: <643@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 19 May 89 18:45:57 GMT
References: <3222@looking.UUCP>
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Reply-To: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
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Brad is a proponent of strong typing; he wants everything up front,
classified neatly in the headers, and carefully pigeonholed.

For moderated groups, or moderate discussion, this is reasonable.

Where the arguments begin to break down is with all this 
talk of 'sub-roots', or articles which purport to be
simultaneously the foundation of a discussion and a response
to a second discussion.  Indeed there's the strong problem
of classifying and categorizing articles of this type, which
do not fit neatly into any sort of linear, hierarchical, or
two-dimensional classification order.  

When I'm feeling philosophical about this, I think of articles
embedded in newsgroup-space.  There's a time dimension, a
region of appropriateness for each group, and then articles
or clumps of articles tacked up within the region.  Similar
newsgroups (news.admin and news.misc) will have regions that
overlap.  In the fullness of time, the region corresponding
to appropriate articles for a group will shrink, expand, 
or exhibit signs of cold fusion (i.e. get real hot and then
die off everywhere but Utah).  The migration of what is
appropriate for a newsgroup will be curtailed somewhat by
a fixation on reference points, but it will persist nonetheless.

Attempts to dictate, legislate, codify, classify, and 
dare I say control discussion in a group of sufficient
tradition and convention will tend to fail.   Discussion
follows its own course, and there's little that most people
can do to change it.  A few individuals can by their persistence,
great skill, and timeliness can do a lot to add to the
content of the group; but I assure you that they do so not
by having articles with perfect References: lines and
carefully chosen keywords.  

--Ed