Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!davecb
From: davecb@yunexus.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: A new idea for USENET?
Message-ID: <7302@yunexus.UUCP>
Date: 6 Feb 90 03:06:00 GMT
References: <5633@barn.COM> <1990Feb5.224637.18524@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: York U. Computing Services
Lines: 42



In article <5633@barn.COM> jsl@barn.COM (John Labovitz) writes:
| I think this trend of new hierachies is a good thing.  Given the
| usefulness and popularity of the news software, I see no reason why there
| couldn't be any number of "alternate" news hierarchies, each with their own
| subject, rules, and distribution.

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
| [...]				 We need to discourage this silly
| empire-building and fold more of these "alternative" hierarchies into
| the existing structure.  This may well require some changes in rules;
| in particular, some sort of procedure for delegating name-space
| management would eliminate a major reason why people think they just
| *have* to have their own hierarchy.  (My opinion is that they are 
| usually wrong, but it is perceived as a significant issue.)

  This isn't an "adminstrative"  issue at all, except that news 
back in the early days confused user interface with distribution
hierarchy.  The "great renaming" mad things somewhat more sane, but
the proliferation of top-level groups is starting to drive us cazy
again.
  If you want to have a hierarchy, have exactly one, and have it
understandable and predicatble: its for people to **use**, after all.
If there are parallel groups with different distributions,make them
into parallell groups or even parallel chains in the same group.  Don't
distort what could be a predicatble structure for the convenience
of the transport medium's administrators.  Or the inconvenience,
as Henry argues.

  Hide the transport issues from the user agent: the user doesn't need
irrelevant issues getting in the way of his understanding.

--dave

[p.s. Henry: how about a two-way mapping in the transport agent
	to allow user-interface issues to not affect transport (:-))
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@yunexus, ...!yunexus!davecb or
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | {toronto area...}lethe!dave 
Willowdale, Ontario,  | Joyce C-B:
CANADA. 416-223-8968  |    He's so smart he's dumb.