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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.notes
Subject: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <3195@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 01:56:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.3195
Posted: Mon Sep 30 01:56:13 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 03:27:24 EDT
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Ninja Ewok Training Grounds
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Xref: watmath net.news:3994 net.news.notes:25

References:<3166@nsc.UUCP> <5999@utzoo.UUCP>

In article <5999@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Chuq, I'd love to see an explanation of how people who can't even get stuff
>into the right newsgroup half the time are going to cope with a more complex
>and more flexible interface.  Keywords lose big if half the messages that
>come in have inappropriate or just-plain-wrong keywords on them.

Henry, please don't interrupt me with facts... (*grin*) It is intuitively
obvious that rewriting things with keywords in mind will solve the problems
of the net, build an environment for nuclear disarmament and cure acne.

Seriously, if the user interface is done right (which is a big if -- as
anyone who has spent time on Unix will attest it is much easier to do a
user interface wrong, or even mediocre) we can get the added flexibility
and power while making it easier to do things right. That's my hope. Since
I haven't even finished my design, much less implemented it, I don't know
how well it will succeed, or whether it'll flop. 

There ARE a number of things we can do. keywords can be generated
automatically for the user and given to him as a list of keywords to choose
from, for example. I've done some research in this area, and keyword
generation is tricky, but with a little help from the net-gurus and some
decent heuristics it can probably be done quite well (the trick is not
getting a list of words, the trick is getting a list of useful words...)
Until I get a prototype up, I simply won't know whether I'm breathing
sillygas or not for sure, but taking an evolutionary step forward in the
user interface should give us both more power and a simpler interface at
the same time. Easy to say, but not so easy to do (that's why I like user
interfaces -- real challenges, since the idea is to not be noticed...)
-- 
:From under the bar at Callahan's:   Chuq Von Rospach 
nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA               {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid}!nsc!chuqui

If you can't talk below a bellow, you can't talk...