Path: utzoo!censor!isgtec!bmw
From: bmw@isgtec.UUCP (Bruce Walker)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Debate on USENET
Message-ID: <147@isgtec.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 89 12:15:39 GMT
References: <35033@apple.Apple.COM> <46115@bbn.COM> <35037@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: bmw@isgtec.UUCP (Bruce Walker)
Organization: ISG Technologies Inc., Mississauga, Ontario
Lines: 21

In article <35037@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>
>o If it's already been said, don't say it again.

    Interestingly, USENET debates have a property that doesn't exist with
face-to-face debates: multiple participants separated by huge temporal delays.
As with satellite-based communications, if I decide to post a message
(my argument), I do not know if someone else (or many 'elses') is (are)
simultaneously posting the same argument, thus creating a kind of message
'collision'.  Or perhaps someone has just posted what should be the final
conclusive fact that would end the debate;  what I contribute may not be
seen for a week.  This kind of message 'run-on' would have the effect of
re-starting the argument, probably uselessly.
    Perhaps we should begin researching "Store and Forward Wide Area
Networks and their Effect on The Dynamics of Debate" or "Debating in the
Presence of Lost, Duplicated and Delayed Arguments"?
    Or has this been done before? :-)
---
Bruce Walker                          ...uunet!mnetor!lsuc!isgtec!bmw
"I'm never too busy to be rudely interrupted" ..utzoo!lsuc!isgtec!bmw
ISG Technologies Inc. 3030 Orlando Dr. Mississauga. Ont. Can. L4V 1S8