Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Debate on USENET
Message-ID: <35099@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 28 Sep 89 20:27:03 GMT
References: 
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 27

>   Interestingly, USENET debates have a property that doesn't exist with
>   face-to-face debates: multiple participants separated by huge
>   temporal delays.

>I tend not to give much credence to this argument these days, because
>of the low propagation times of the NNTP massfeed hubs, one of which
>is my site.

Don't look at it from a techincal standpoint, Karl. While propogation delays
were the gating problem when volume was lower and the net was younger, these
days it's people delays. Not everyone reads news on a daily basis (nor
should they. It's actually, I think, much more effient to read it less often
in larger batches than in dribs and drabs. Doesn't mean I do it that way,
but...). 

In a face to face debate, you have real-time responses. On USENET, there are
some propogation delays, but there's also the delay between delivery of the
message to a site and when that message is actually read.

Think of holding a debate with someone via voicemail. The delivery delay is
functionally zero, but that doesn't mean there isn't any delay in the system.

-- 

Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA
chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking. I am not Appl
Segmentation Fault. Core dumped.