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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Satellite netnews (software, etc)
Message-ID: <482@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Dec-84 05:51:24 EST
Article-I.D.: vortex.482
Posted: Tue Dec 25 05:51:24 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Dec-84 04:20:38 EST
References: <532@vu44.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 67

Ultimately (not for awhile) I suspect that there will be separate
satellite netnews newsgroups that are parallels to various of the
conventional newsgroups.  Sites could take the conventional
groups by phone, or the satellite groups off air, or both.
Obviously, the last choice will result in lots of repetition,
but if someone really wants to do it they can.

The whole idea of the satellite project is to
provide a news conduit that will have higher quality, overall,
than the network now (that is, more than 80% of the stuff *would*
be worth reading!) and that wouldn't be limited by the low speeds
of dialup modems and uneven (in terms of time) delivery of
messages to various sites.  The project will not be forwarding
all netnews materials to the satellite.  It has never intended to.
Given "parallel" groups where appropriate, you could subscribe
to net.misc and get 700 separate messages from people explaining
what "foo" means, or get satellite netnews and (presumably) get
only one or two.  In this respect, the satellite groups would be
much like the moderated groups, but with a vastly more efficient
and faster means of distribution.

I remain strongly convinced that as the current unmoderated net 
traffic increases, the amount of "fluff" in the net will increase far
faster than the real meat, with the result that more and more
people stop reading many groups.  We all know people who have 
stopped reading groups (simply because they don't have the time
or inclination to wade through garbage) who really *should* still
be participating.  My hope is that the combination of moderated
groups and a broadcast means for distribution will result in 
a higher quality choice of information for those who want it.

The "ordinary" network will still be there of course, by phone,
for those who want it.  But the unmoderated portion will
continue to grow and the garbage quotient will rise along
with it.  Sooner or later, fewer and fewer people will have
time to wade through all the muck looking for the 
occasional gem.  (Obviously this situation isn't equally bad
on all groups, but you get the idea).  And sooner or later,
people are going to stop paying to send many of these messages
around the network.

In any case, screening is to maintain the quality and usefulness
of the information, to make the best use of our available
bandwidth, and to remove materials that would be considered
objectional or unsuitable in a nationwide broadcast medium.

If the stargate project was just to provide a high-tech means
for broadcasting the current masses of netnews, without
any improvement in overall quality, it wouldn't be worth doing.
I'm one of those people who has had to stop reading many
groups because of the low level of useful material.

I'm hoping that together, we can combine common sense and
satellites and generate something that we can all be proud of,
and that we can all find useful most of the time, not just
occasionally.

--Lauren--

P.S.  Sorry if I seem to be coming down pretty hard on the 
quality of unmoderated netnews today.  But let's face it, things
*are* going downhill.  And as more sites join in, the volumes,
when unmoderated, are going to be, uh, impressive (depressive?),
to say the very least...

--LW--