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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: keyword-based news
Message-ID: <2185@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 15:02:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2185
Posted: Tue Jul  7 15:02:26 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jul-87 02:15:26 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8262@utzoo.UUCP>
Sender: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 49
Summary: keyword based news is interesting and don't forget user evolution.

As a side note, I hacked up a newsreader that is based purely on keywords 
to see what it would be like.  It took all the words in the Subject: 
Summary: and Keywords: lines, 'uniq'ed them and removed 'noise' words (e.g. 
the, and, a, , etc) and then logged 'em in a file as they arrived on 
the machine.  Then the intrepid user would say "I want to read news about x,
y, and z" and be shown the news *independent of what groups they were posted 
in*.

I used it for a few days and found that it worked QUITE well and that the 
biggest problem I could see was that it would become very difficult to 
figure out what group(s) to post a completely new article to since users 
of this knews system would unlearn the distinction between newsgroups.  
This isn't good because the program and users would have to live in harmony 
with the rest of the net...

A fun experiment showing that my theories that the concept of grouping
articles by a small number of newsgroups is indeed as archaic as it
seems and that I found articles and discussions in groups that I had
never even read because they were indeed keyworded (see above) correctly.

And as to the stuff that isn't keyworded correctly, well, if you think
about it, as more and more people were to use a system of this nature
the articles would become better and better keyworded since if you are
going to go to the trouble of WRITING an article, you certainly want to
make sure that the maximal number of people READ it, right?  (this can
be helped by some decent frontend software too - stuff that allows the
user to edit the subject line, prompts for a "summary line", and perhaps
does a crude first pass automatic keyword list).  The key is that it is a
lot easier for people to modify something than create it, typically.

*sigh*  I can imagine the hostile remarks this posting is going to 
generate.  We've had, as people have pointed out, this discussion before.
A great number of schemes have been proposed to the net, including this
keywording, Webbers' multiple moderators, Fairs' accolades, and such, and
somehow we keep ending up with these artificial newsgroup boundaries,
articles that are more likely to be cross-posted than not, and discussion
threads that are doomed to follow the 'base note' regardless of if we are
still on topic or not...it's always the lowest common denominator.  Maybe
there's a lesson to be learned in all this??

Anyway, for what it's worth...I shall attempt to find a few free evenings
and get my knews reader up to a sufficient state to allow me to post it
to net.sources (errr, to whatever group is appropriate, since It Is Obvious
that Unmoderated Groups are Evil (even though I have proposed a scheme to
alleviate the problems cited with the old unmoderated newsgroups)).  *sigh*

				From the far corners of the universe,

						-- Dave Taylor