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From: jss@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Shapiro)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <2286@sjuvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 15:28:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: sjuvax.2286
Posted: Thu Oct  3 15:28:02 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 15:14:44 EDT
References: <10381@ucbvax.ARPA> <3274@nsc.UUCP> <698@tpvax.fluke.UUCP> <251@graffiti.UUCP> <3188@nsc.UUCP>
Organization: Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.
Lines: 40

Chuq, I didn't see your original posting, but I am familiar with
several keyword schemes, and in general, I find they work pretty
well.  The catches that I see are as follows:

	1. All keyword systems in successful use at the moment have some
	   central authority controlling the meaning of keywords and the
	   selection of which keywords properly convey a topic.  Otherwise
	   there is no way to reliably search for stuff on a given topic.
	   I don't see how this can be maintained on the net.

	2. Given 1., How is a given user to keep informed of the current
	   set of active keywords, particularly in that your article on
	   the Amiga posted under the keywords "micro" and "amiga"
	   would go right through my keyword scan for "cbm" and I
	   probably would not find out about this until too late.

	3. Is there a strategy which can be adopted with respect to
	   informing users about new keywords which does not in
	   effect automatically resubscribe the user to a bad newsgroup
	   each time a keyword is invented?

I am also not convinced that this solves the newsgroup proliferation
problem, as the invention of new keywords which duplicate old ones wil
happen all the time, with the net effect of increasing my .newsrc
indefinitely.

These problems can be solved in a number of ways, and the best seems
to be to keep a history on keywords and expire them if they fall below
a certain usage level.

I am curious, though, how you plane to do the keyword to file
mapping.  Any information you might provide would be appreciated.

Jon
-- 
Jonathan S. Shapiro
Haverford College

	"It doesn't compile pseudo code... What do you expect for fifty
		dollars?" - M. Tiemann