Breaking RSU into many categories

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 09:05:37 +0100, "Arnold the Aardvark"
<aardvark@NOTTHIStubulidentata.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>OK. Will the prefix have to come at the beginning? Newsreaders are
>likely to prepend "Re: " when I respond to something - amending this
>for every post will be a real fag. Mind you, I seem to be the only one
I read and post via the newsgroup, too. Do you, still, or am *I* now
the only one? :-)

Klaas Bil

I'm reading and posting via the newsgroup, which for me has advantages
over both the forum access and e-mail. My main concern is that I would
like to continue seeing all messages being relayed/mirrored to r.s.u..
If they have a prefix, fine; it might help me a little because I too
find the volume almost too high. I would be willing to manually add a
[prefix] to my posts if that helps others.

I'm still puzzled how Gilby wants to deal with threads veering off the
original category but it doesn't concern me.

Klaas Bil

[dustin]

Originally posted by John Foss
> John, do you mean you that you feel you spend too much time looking at
> posts (I'm guessing "yes" here)

Darn good guess!

>or that you'll feel left out and disconnected if you don't get every
> post via email?

No, but I like to at least have a glimpse of them all. This tells me what
people are talking about, which topics are generating the most interest, and
who's talking about what. All this without having to enter each of the
various topic areas.

Hey John,
Currently, you can do all this quite easily in the forum. I gave up aol, then I gave up email, now I really like the forum. I press one button on my keyboard and there it is (cable is ace!). All the threads with recent posts are listed in order of most recent to oldest. As far as topics generating the most interest, there's a counter column that shows the number of posts and the number of times that thread has been viewed. Other columns show who started the thread and who posted last. Stats are cool. And one of my fave things...I don't have to download, delete or determine what to do with 1573 emails when I get back from my holiday. I would hope that the Gilbymeister would give the user the option of choosing whether they want to view categories or everything...just a couple more cents.

Klaas Bil wrote:

> I'm reading and posting via the newsgroup, which for me has advantages
> over both the forum access and e-mail. My main concern is that I would
> like to continue seeing all messages being relayed/mirrored to r.s.u..
> If they have a prefix, fine; it might help me a little because I too
> find the volume almost too high. I would be willing to manually add a
> [prefix] to my posts if that helps others.

Why don't we also split r.s.u into the same categories? I've never set
up a newsgroup but I don't think it's that hard.
--
Jim Farrand, ML Group, mailto:farrand@cs.bris.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science, http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~farrand
University of Bristol, tel: +44-(0)117-954-5254
Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK

It's probably been stated before, but if you use any email client that can quickly sort by subject (Outlook Express, or AOL for example)you shouldn't be overwhelmed by the volume. With your messages sorted by subject, you can take as little or as long as
you wish to peruse. It's easy to tell if a message interests you simply by glancing at the subject. Any veteran reader knows this. Even if you have 1000 messages in your inbox, it only takes minutes to weed through them and delete. (As long as you are
on cable or better).

Seeing how posts change topic so easily, I don't see how categories would help much.

Joe Merrill

> Why don't we also split r.s.u into the same categories? I've never set
> up a newsgroup but I don't think it's that hard.

because there's no easy way on a newsgroup to see all the messages from
several newsgroups at once. Having to read several newsgroups each with a
small number of messages in would take forever. Whereas setting up a filter
so that your newsgroup client only views some topics is completely trivial
in most readers (it definately is in outlook express). You can easily not
view or download messages in categories you don't want to read.

Also, it would make for lots of seemingly dead newsgroups, these would be
quite likely to get removed from news servers, as there are so many
newsgroups created all the time that some pruning is inevitable.

Also everyone using the system would have to persuade their admin to carry
all these extra groups to their news-server, for a lot of people using the
news system this would be likely to mean losing access to the
rec.sport.unicycling sub groups, especially for anyone who wasn't techy and
wouldn't know who to contact about this.

Personally I think it's a really really bad idea given that anyone who wants
to can filter with very little penalty (downloading of headers but not full
messages) and it blocks everyone who just likes downloading it and reading
it all at once.

Joe

Joe Marshall wrote:

> because there's no easy way on a newsgroup to see all the messages from
> several newsgroups at once. Having to read several newsgroups each with a
> small number of messages in would take forever.

Really? In all the newsreaders I ever used it's only one click to
change newsgroups. (Though I never used OE, I imagine they managed to
make it complicated somehow )

Surely this argument is also an argument against splitting the group on
the message board? I expect changing groups on the website is far
slower than changing in a news reader.

> Also, it would make for lots of seemingly dead newsgroups, these would be
> quite likely to get removed from news servers, as there are so many
> newsgroups created all the time that some pruning is inevitable.

If there's no traffic, why have that category in the first place? There
are very low volume newsgroups that are still carried by every provider
I've used.

> Also everyone using the system would have to persuade their admin to carry
> all these extra groups to their news-server, for a lot of people using the
> news system this would be likely to mean losing access to the
> rec.sport.unicycling sub groups, especially for anyone who wasn't techy and
> wouldn't know who to contact about this.

Again, I never had to ask my provider to get even obscure/low
volume/brand new newsgroups. Maybe I've just been lucky, but surely any
decent ISP just takes total feeds of alt., rec. comp. etc. etc.?
Occasionally without binary newsgroups, but that doesn't affect us.

> Personally I think it's a really really bad idea given that anyone who wants
> to can filter with very little penalty (downloading of headers but not full
> messages)

Off the top of my head I can think of several advantages. Firstly we
keep the consistency between the web/NG interface, for those people who
use both. Secondly, we wouldn't have the problem that people using the
newsgroup who don't know (or don't remember) about the subject line
tagging are effectively going to be marginalized. (Don't know the
rules? Your post goes to a different forum to everyone else. How
unfriendly is that?) And finally the NG would become much more friendly
to newbies, who can immediately dip in and read about something they are
interested in without making filters etc.

> and it blocks everyone who just likes downloading it and reading
> it all at once.

I'm really unconvinced that it does. And those few people who do have
ISP's so lame that 1) They don't take up the new groups automatically
and 2) They refuse to do so when asked, can still use the web
interface. (Or preferably, change to a decent ISP.)

--
Jim Farrand, ML Group, mailto:farrand@cs.bris.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science, http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~farrand
University of Bristol, tel: +44-(0)117-954-5254
Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK

> > because there's no easy way on a newsgroup to see all the messages from
> > several newsgroups at once. Having to read several newsgroups each with
a
> > small number of messages in would take forever.
>
> Really? In all the newsreaders I ever used it's only one click to
> change newsgroups. (Though I never used OE, I imagine they managed to
> make it complicated somehow )

Nope. Even with OE it's one click.
>
> Surely this argument is also an argument against splitting the group on
> the message board? I expect changing groups on the website is far
> slower than changing in a news reader.

Two clicks? You could set it up to do it with only one click on a 'next
newsgroup' icon though, or have separate icons for each newsgroup.
>
> > Also, it would make for lots of seemingly dead newsgroups, these would
be
> > quite likely to get removed from news servers, as there are so many
> > newsgroups created all the time that some pruning is inevitable.
>
> If there's no traffic, why have that category in the first place? There
> are very low volume newsgroups that are still carried by every provider
> I've used.
>
> > Also everyone using the system would have to persuade their admin to
carry
> > all these extra groups to their news-server, for a lot of people using
the
> > news system this would be likely to mean losing access to the
> > rec.sport.unicycling sub groups, especially for anyone who wasn't tetchy
and
> > wouldn't know who to contact about this.
>
> Again, I never had to ask my provider to get even obscure/low
> volume/brand new newsgroups. Maybe I've just been lucky, but surely any
> decent ISP just takes total feeds of alt., rec. comp. etc. etc.?
> Occasionally without binary newsgroups, but that doesn't affect us.

That's been my experience too, for the most part, though I did have to ask
for alt.health.massage-therapy.
>
> > Personally I think it's a really bad idea given that anyone who wants
> > to can filter with very little penalty (downloading of headers but not
full
> > messages)
>
> Off the top of my head I can think of several advantages. Firstly we
> keep the consistency between the web/NG interface, for those people who
> use both. Secondly, we wouldn't have the problem that people using the
> newsgroup who don't know (or don't remember) about the subject line
> tagging are effectively going to be marginalized. (Don't know the
> rules? Your post goes to a different forum to everyone else. How
> unfriendly is that?) And finally the NG would become much more friendly
> to newbies, who can immediately dip in and read about something they are
> interested in without making filters etc.

Er, subject line tagging? Newbies can read subject lines as readily as
anyone else, right?
>
> > and it blocks everyone who just likes downloading it and reading
> > it all at once.

Well, in the sense that they'd have to download x times instead, but I'd
assume x would be a small number, single-digit small.
>
> I'm really unconvinced that it does. And those few people who do have
> ISP's so lame that 1) They don't take up the new groups automatically
> and 2) They refuse to do so when asked, can still use the web
> interface. (Or preferably, change to a decent ISP.)
>
> Jim Farrand, ML Group, mailto:farrand@cs.bris.ac.uk
> Department of Computer Science, http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~farrand
> University of Bristol, tel: +44-(0)117-954-5254
> Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK

You know, when I started reading your post I strongly preferred not
splitting the newsgroup. On reflection and after reading your post, I don't
know why.

"Jim Farrand" <farrand@cs.bris.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3D737BF2.C12EFF8F@cs.bris.ac.uk...
> Really? In all the newsreaders I ever used it's only one click to
> change newsgroups. (Though I never used OE, I imagine they managed to
> make it complicated somehow )
>

Yes it's one click, but then you have to wait for it to contact the server
and get the new headers for the group.

If you synchronize in advance it takes significantly longer if you've got to
sychronize several small groups than one large group. Fine if you've got
broadband, slow if you've got a 64kbit isdn connection, not very nice at all
on a supposedly 56k modem.

> Surely this argument is also an argument against splitting the group on
> the message board? I expect changing groups on the website is far
> slower than changing in a news reader.
>

Yes it would be (and was) until gilby pointed out that on the message board
you will be able to view all the categories put together so you would have
the choice of the old view.

> Off the top of my head I can think of several advantages. Firstly we
> keep the consistency between the web/NG interface, for those people who
> use both. Secondly, we wouldn't have the problem that people using the
> newsgroup who don't know (or don't remember) about the subject line
> tagging are effectively going to be marginalized. (Don't know the
> rules? Your post goes to a different forum to everyone else. How
> unfriendly is that?) And finally the NG would become much more friendly
> to newbies, who can immediately dip in and read about something they are
> interested in without making filters etc.

presumably, if you don't know the rules your thread would get filtered into
some general group and then split out by the moderators / spam killers, who
already read everything anyway.

> I'm really unconvinced that it does. And those few people who do have
> ISP's so lame that 1) They don't take up the new groups automatically
> and 2) They refuse to do so when asked, can still use the web
> interface. (Or preferably, change to a decent ISP.)

Again, that blocks out non-nerds who just happen to have crap isps, or even
people who have no choice of ISP. I use the internet a lot at work,
personally I can't choose which ISP they use, I also get really really slow
connections to any non-isp news-servers I've found.

It also means we get 5 different copies of every spam message which could
get a bit annoying too.

Joe

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 17:54:45 +0100, "Joe Marshall"
<localhost@127.0.0.1> wrote:

>"Jim Farrand" <farrand@cs.bris.ac.uk> wrote in message
>news:3D737BF2.C12EFF8F@cs.bris.ac.uk...
>> Really? In all the newsreaders I ever used it's only one click to
>> change newsgroups. (Though I never used OE, I imagine they managed to
>> make it complicated somehow )
>>
>
>Yes it's one click, but then you have to wait for it to contact the server
>and get the new headers for the group.

Need not be a problem. I'm using Free Agent for a news reader, and I
can select multiple newsgroups with single clicks (holding CTRL or
SHIFT), and then get headers for all of them. There is no noticeable
delay in the dl process switching from one ng to the next. When
selecting bodies to retrieve I have to switch between ng's but again
it's a single click.

Klaas Bil

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 10:04:31 -0700, John Foss <john_foss@asinet.com>
wrote:

>Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, someone started a unicycling mailing
>list. I can't remember who it was! A guy in Arizona I think. We should dig
>up this history.

You can find more historical info here:
<ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.announc...ort.unicycling>

Klaas Bil

If you had this signature, I have forged it.

[uni_boy50]

intersting idea.
I'd say that they might as well have the categories, but less then 10, with less then 10 sub categories. As long as you still have the recent topics, that could make searching a lot easyer.
As for people getting off topic, that can be a problem, and annoying, so could we just all agree that if we see a post that got off topic, we jerk it back on topic.

One thing that i notice with people who are not members is that they are often the more famous ones, who non-unicyclers know about. I won't list names, so as not to offend anyone, but any idea why that is? And look i'm off topic! see how easy it is?

Oh, and I've also sometimes posted to "just conversation" (months
ago). Does that make me cool too?

sure, why not

[U-Turn]

The muniac category system works well partly because there is an indicator showing which categories have new messages in them, partly because the number of posters is small, and partly because muniac enforces the system personally.

I was on a backpacking email newsgroup for a while, and the number of messages arriving, and the need to connect the emails mentally into threads, was overwhelming. Not to mention the daunting chore Klass mentioned of coming back from some time away and having to wade through literally thousands of emails. I think this forum approach is fantastic. The search engine makes it even more so. My guess is that the email users are just used to their system. The internet is here to stay. I recommend to the email users that they try the forum approach for a week or two. I doubt that they'll go back.

[unicus]

I like the idea of splitting it into different categories but not too many.

Another site I go to also uses vBulletin (Emu-UK http://www.total-amiga.com/Vbulletin/ ) and they have it split. They also have a section for members only and some very nice smiley’s (animated ones). They also have a link to view ‘today’s active threads’ it displays how many threads are active and how many posts in all categories, one click and you see them all.

Cheers, Gary

[sendhair]

originally posted by uni_boy50:
As for people getting off topic, that can be a problem, and annoying, so could we just all agree that if we see a post that got off topic, we jerk it back on topic.

A Topic Policeman identified!