I highly recommend these techniques. Now if only I knew how to tell in
advance that an article was composed almost entirely of a reference to
a previous article....
Adam
I should also point out fro the above that a lot of the new users like
Frank Adrian are driving out a lot of the old users like Brad Templeton. We
aren't getting the same kind of users we used to have, and I think the
overall quality of the postings in general has gone way down. It just isn't
bodies we need to count, it is the intelligence within them, and I am not
terribly sure that we've done much more that spread the total net IQ over a
much wider number of bodies...
chuq
--
From the ministry of silly talks: Chuq Von Rospach
{allegra,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chu...@decwrl.ARPA
National Semiconductor does not require useless disclaimers on posted
material that is obviously not posted by company spokesmen...
If the net "falls apart", it will probably splinter into regional
nets, because this would generate a smaller stream of articles.
(This appears to be the concern, that there are "too many" articles).
I would rather this came about naturally, however, instead of
some "clever" person (Mr. Vance?) deciding who is "worthy" of
using the network. "Naturally" means that one by one sites will
say "sorry, we don't take 'net' distribution anymore" and limit
it to regional groups (hey, I'm still proposing a 'west'
distribution!).
This would be good and bad, of course. The quality of regional
nets would improve, I suspect, but for the most part they may be cut
off from each other: who will want to transmit (and pay for) all of the
New England stuff to the West Coast? Alas, the pool of knowledge
(and other stuff) is reduced.
Stargate may solve this problem; any technology that lowers the
cost of Usenet will help maintain its current topography. But if
the 'regional net' scenario results -- well, it won't be a complete
tragedy, just a different sort of net.
--
Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun}!amdahl!gam
==========
Sylvain Langlois (...mcvax!vmucnam!lvbull!sylvain)
PS: If you read this, I feel sorry for you, it didn't really worth it!!