Xref: utzoo alt.config:1364 alt.sources.d:396 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!talos!kjones From: kjones@talos.uu.net (Kyle Jones) Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.sources.d Subject: Re: indexing service (was Re: Stupid reposting service) Message-ID: <1989Dec19.164146.25324@talos.uu.net> Date: 19 Dec 89 16:41:46 GMT References: <9080@leadsv.UUCP> <1989Dec15.194952.13579@twwells.com> <15006@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1989Dec18.170249.12136@talos.uu.net> Reply-To: kjones@talos.uu.net Lines: 32 Edward Vielmetti writes: > The problem with the existing alt.sources.index is that there > really isn't a lot of information in there -- no article titles, > no people names, no sense of what might be useful or not. > > If you don't already have those articles on your spool partition, > I'd have a hard time arguing that you should get them all just > in case they were interesting. > > Not that it's a bad idea, don't get me wrong -- just that it could > add a little more value than just the Message-IDs and better > accomplish its stated goal. > > --Ed alt.sources.index does what it is intended to do: identify sources. "Interesting" and "sources" are synonymous in the context of alt.sources.index. This also seems to be the basic assumption under which the reposting service is operating; anything goes as long as it's source, correct? If so, then alt.sources.index is obviously the more economical of the two schemes. I'm not averse to others posting indices in alt.sources.index, provided the proper article format is used. As for human readable indices, does anyone else think the format of alt.sources.index should be changed to have some human readable data along with the message-IDs? Now is the time to make such changes, while there is yet little or no software that will be broken by the change. What I have in mind is a second field surrounded by double quotes that gives a terse description of what the article is.