Re: Newsgroup Signal to Noise Ratio

David Cressey wrote:
...
> Why not think a little more radically? What I'd like is to peruse the
> existing posts in "hypertext form". That is, instead of linking one post
> to another post, (the "response relationship") the way Google groups or MS
> Outlook does, why not have a hyperlink in the specific word or phrase that
> elicited a response? Then, people interested in that particular
> continuation of the thread could click on the link, while the rest of us
> continued reading in sequence?
>
> I see several problems with this. One is whether you want the responder to
> be able to indicate what word or phrase should lead to the response. The
> second is that hyperlinks are forward links, while the existing response
> relationship is implemented by back links. Back links are a whole lot
> easier to manage in a distributed fashion, because you can add a back link
> without modifying the original.
> ...

Yes, and having the one-track mind that I do, I imagine those links are nothing more than a variety of ordinary implication.

p Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 09:09:45 CDT