Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!att!alberta!teletron!andrew
From: andrew@teletron.UUCP (Andrew Scott)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Too much for the reader? (was: Re: Unbiased moderator volunteers)
Message-ID: <394@teletron.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 88 15:28:48 GMT
References: <2805@rpp386.UUCP> <28.UUL1.3#935@aocgl.UUCP> <4542@gryphon.CTS.COM> 
Organization: TeleTronic Communications Ltd., Edmonton, Alta.
Lines: 29

In article , webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
> In article <385@teletron.UUCP>, andrew@teletron.UUCP (Andrew Scott) writes:
> >...
> > The net is just too big to handle as a *reader*.
> 
> You know, I was down at the Library Of Congress the other day and noticed
> that they had more books than I could read in a lifetime (even if I
> stopped reading the net).  They have just gotten way too big to handle
> as a *reader*.

Cute analogy, but there is a major difference between the Library Of Congress
and USENET.  When I go to a library, I use the card catalog system to find
exactly what I'm looking for.  On USENET, things aren't nearly so organized.
One could scan for subject lines or keywords, but very few people bother to
add a keywords line and many subject lines are undescriptive.

With the current news software, a reader is left with having to scan through
newsgroups, "n"-ing over articles that don't look interesting.  I wouldn't
use a library at all if I had to do the analogous operation:  walk down the
aisles looking at the title of each book.

Perhaps a solution to the net explosion is better news reading software and
a better organization of articles.  I'm not so sure that either will appear
soon, as a keyword based news reader has been proposed for years with not
much to show for it, and some people insist that it doesn't really matter
what newsgroup names we pick because users will find the discussions anyway.
-- 
Andrew Scott		andrew@teletron.uucp    - or -
			{codas, ubc-cs, watmath, ..}!alberta!teletron!andrew