Auiucdcs.150 net.general utzoo!decvax!duke!uiucdcs!kolstad Fri Oct 9 15:19:48 1981 Reading Newsnet The news network as it stands now is certainly a usable tool. However, I sometimes find it difficult to follow the thread of topics and discussions on a single topic since responses to previous queries are intertwined with other responses and newer queries. I would like to describe another -news- system developed at a rival department here at the U of Illinois which has a single feature which I think would solve the problem of interspersing. The PLATO computer aided instruction system runs at U of I on a CDC 6500 (dual processor 6400) and a CDC Cyber 74 (dual processor also). Through the use of 40,000,000 bytes of extended memory (really!) it achieves reasonable response time for 625 concurrent users (which is pretty amazing, when you think about it). The total user base numbers in the thousands for this centralized system -- which uses phone lines to connect to tens of sites distributed across the U.S. Plato's large user community, shared memory, and ample disk space motivated implementation of "notesfiles". These "notesfiles" are similar to the news-net and similar to some advanced bulletin board systems. Each notesfile is supposedly devoted to a single topic and has a number of notes. Each note can have a number of responses. The responses ARE ASSOCIATED WITH THE NOTE. So -- when you read note "Flaming about netnews", you see the responses to THAT NOTE after the note itself. A driver program (the "sequencer") traverses the simple tree in time-order, thus allowing display of only those unseen notes (it shows the "base note" then unread responses for that note). The increase in discussion continuity and utility is great. There are now 1500 notesfiles on Plato with statistics compiled for the last 1119 days: 5,700,000 entries to the note system (5162/day) with an average of 1428 new notes/day. Devotees have one to two dozen notesfiles on their sequencer. It is simple to skip discussions that are not pertinent -- and simple to follow others in detail (and sequence). The last year has seen U of I's Plato notesfiles linked with Control Data's Plato systems to provide "Intersystem Notesfiles". These work just like this news net (with the exception that routing is not explicit -- notes are automatically routed to the correct system) and have become fairly reliable. I believe that the news net would benefit greatly by augmenting it with this kind of tree structure. Comments? Rob Kolstad = duke!uiucdcs!kolstad ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.