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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: keyword-based news
Message-ID: <8262@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 17:52:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8262
Posted: Mon Jul  6 17:52:23 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jul-87 17:52:23 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 18

> A few years ago I, and some others were arguing fairly strenuously that
> some kind of keyword based news reader was required to cut down on the
> amount of chaff you have to search through to find the odd kernel of wheat.
> In the end, the discussion went the way of the Dodo...

Well, there were reasons for that.  I and some others were counter-arguing
fairly strenuously that keyword-based news readers will not work unless the
keywords are well-chosen, which they wouldn't be.  The successful keyword-
based retrieval services maintain tight central control over their keyword
list and often use experts to assign keywords to new material.  There is
just no way to make that work on Usenet.  What's more, the few studies that
have been done on retrieval efficiency show that users *think* they are
getting 80% or so of relevant material, while the real number is more like
25%.  That is, even well-run keyword-based systems show you only about one
in every four kernels of wheat.  It's pretty, but it just don't work.
-- 
Mars must wait -- we have un-         Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
finished business on the Moon.     {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry