Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!ka From: ka@spanky.UUCP Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: Keyword News Usenet Request For Comment 001 Message-ID: <372@spanky.UUCP> Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 21:24:40 EDT Article-I.D.: spanky.372 Posted: Mon Jun 13 21:24:40 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jun-83 03:42:47 EDT Lines: 109 Brad, there are two parts to your proposal--the design and an im- plementation. I will pass over the latter very quickly. It looks like your scheme is implementable but involves a lot of work. Most of the efficiency problems associated with large numbers of groups have been fixed in 2.10, so don't expect K news to run faster than B news (although it would be nice if it did). One problem with having too many newsgroups is that they are dif- ficult to keep track of. For example, you get people posting to net.general because they don't know where else to post it. Switching to the keyword system you propose will eliminate the net.general problem by eliminating net.general, but it may make the total confusion worse. You give an example which includes "star wars" as a keyword referring to the Reagan proposal; if I blithely unsubscribe to that keyword I'm likely to loose stuff about the movie as well. The same problem occurs under the current system (e. g. is net.railroad for discussing real rail- roads or model railroads?), but we at least have an official list of newsgroups to resolve such disputes. It's hard to say how big the problem would be without trying it. Probably there should be an official list of "permanent" keywords which would define com- monly used keywords including article types like "flame" and "joke" as well as common topics like "unix" and "c". It is espe- cially important to keep track of keyword which are special to the K news system, like keywords which control distribution A related problem involves updating subscription lists, since new keywords will continuously be invented. Providing a list of new keywords and the opportunity to update the subscription file each time news is read eliminates most of my concerns. A lot depends upon the rate of addition of new keywords. I would expect quite a few of them--every time I mention something silly like ham- burgers or socks there is the chance that a huge discussion will develop, so I will create a new keyword just in case. My guess is that the fancy feature you suggest will be only used for a few common keywords. Other keywords will just be either listed or not listed because they change too often. Another part of your proposal calls for linking articles and fol- lowups together. This is a good idea. I wonder if this makes a keyword system unnecessary because discussions are already grouped together. Probably not--the keyword system is more flex- ible. For example, you can post to a variety of keywords, but you can't post an article that is a followup to two articles simultaneously. The use of additional keywords to identify things like flames also seems helpful. The keyword/newsgroup interface would have to remain around more or less indefinitely. My understanding is that USENET currently runs on four basic systems: A news, B news, notesfile, and [unidentified] BITNET software. In addition, certain newsgroups are gatewayed into ARPANET mailing lists. K news may replace the first three, but it can't replace the BITNET software (which runs on IBM hardware) or ARPANET mailing lists (which go to *many* different types of machines). This might not be too bad, al- though it would complicate life for the K news user. The best bet seems to be to include the newsgroups in the keyword list. Keeping a translation table on each system would be very diffi- cult to make function correctly; probably articles discussing Reagan's star wars proposal would end up in net.sf-lovers. How- ever, a translation system which showed the user the generated newsgroups and asked if they were correct would be OK. At some point we might get all of USENET converted to keywords; at that point there would just be a list of keywords for the Arpanet mailing lists. One miscellaneous point--I don't like long newsgroup names much and the keywords would be likely to be long. In fact, the propo- sal calls for keywords ending in "_Distribution" for distribu- tion, so I would have to type that for each article I post. More importantly, I have to wait while the user interface displays those keywords on my screen. We could abbreviate this, e. g. "Dist nj", although that potentially is more confusing to new users. I would simply use newsgroup names as keywords rather than mapping "net.space" into "Newsgroup net.space"; the presence of the dot should make plain "net.space" clear enough. Another element of your proposal is requiring users to specify titles for followups. We went through this when developing the USENET Interchange Standard. This calls for interfaces to pro- vide a default title consisting of the original title, preceeded by "Re: " if the original title did not already have this. It does, however, allow the user to specify a different title if she desires. The reasoning behind this approach is that there is no need to change the title if the topic is really the same, which is usually the case. (Can you think of a better title for this article?) I agree that there has been a tendency for people to rely on the default title too much, but I expect that this is largely because they don't know how rather than that they are too lazy. The readnews 'f' command will take a title as an argument after the '-', if any. In vnews you can edit the "Subject:" line that appears when you enter the editor. K news seems to fit in pretty well with the USENET Interchage Standard. The standard does not define a "Keyword:" line, but code to support one is already in 2.10, and older sites should pass it through unchanged. I would be hesitant about adding a second keywords line for keywords added to a followup, as I understand you are proposing. Generation of the "Newsgroup:" and "Distribution:" lines can be done at the posting site. (The "Distribution:" line won't really work until almost all sites have switched to 2.10; K news will have to wait for that.) A lot of thought obviously went into your proposal. As you can tell from the length of this response, I am interested in the idea. I'll comment more on the implementation in a couple of days. Kenneth Almquist