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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