Re: Newsgroup Signal to Noise Ratio

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 11:31:52 -0300
Message-ID: <4639f22a$0$4038$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net>

David Cressey wrote:

> "paul c" <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac> wrote in message
> news:EYk_h.157503$aG1.18337_at_pd7urf3no...
>

>>Frank Hamersley wrote:
>>
>>>David Cressey wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Bob mentioned that the signal to noise ratio in this newsgroup is
>>>>improving.
>>>>I share that perception.
>>>
>>>
>>>This true IMO ... however I am getting slightly cheesed off by long
>>>multi threaded posts - not that I was previously blameless.
>>>
>>>Whilst I am a confirmed "bottom poster" I hanker for 1 quote + 1
>>>response in 30 or so lines max.
>>>
>>>Yeah yeah - its very 21st century (gnats attention span) even though I
>>>am notionally a boomer but I like the fast aquisition by leaning on the
>>>downarrow rather than having to page down to find the meat 'n potatoes.
>>>
>>>Cheers, Frank.
>>
>>I suspect gnats are more observant than humans - they need to be in
>>order to survive.
>>
>>I'd like to highlight an OP sentence, then press a key for my reply and
>>have other keys to "unstack" fragments of a thread and never scroll at
>>all.  I don't think html quite grasped that possibility.
>>

>
>
> 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.
>
> Another problem is that I can't see how to implement the "what's new"
> feature.... one that I depend on just about every time I visit a newsgroup.
>
> None of these problems is a showstopper, however.

Back-linking leads to big headaches with spam. Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 09:31:52 CDT