🚀 go-pugleaf

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Date: Tue, 5-Jun-84 16:29:00 EDT
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ssages_to_be_transferred_to_the_Swedish_%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
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To: Message_Group_at_BRL_mailing_list%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA, "Robert Elton Maas" <rem@MIT-MC.ARPA>, "Scott L. McGregor" <MCGREGOR@hp-labs.csnet>


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In-Reply-To: <8406041609.AA15587@HP-VENUS>


In COM we have both ordinary conferences, where all participants
can write whatever they want, and write-protected conferences,
somewhat similar to what you call magazines. We also have different
kinds of "selection conferences" into which selected entries
from the normal conferences can be entered. Finally we store
the "comment" links between entries into the data base, creating
"sub-conferences" consisting of the items which are related directly
or indirectly by comment links. There are a number of operations
on such sub-conferences, such as scanning or searching in a sub-
conference or skipping entries from a sub-conference.

Our experience is that the sub-conference facility, or "comment
tree" facility, or whathever you prefer to call it, is very much
used and important for our users. Thus, we plan to put even more
stress on this facility in future developments.

Our experience is that the various kinds of write-protected conferences
and selection conferences do provide some valuable services to
some people, but in general have a problem in that too few entries
are sent to them. This may be an economic problem, we have no
tools at present for paying editors for such conferences, and
this may be neccessary.

Note that the concept of "keyword" and the concept of "conference"
or "mailing list" is really very similar. Especially so in COM,
where the same entry can be sent to several conferences, without
forcing members of both conferences to see the entry twice.
The idea of sending a note about graphics in Pascal to both the
"Pascal" and the "graphics" conference/mailing list, is very
similar to the idea of giving the note these two keywords.

A difficulty with keywords may be that if you select items by
keywords, you will get a somewhat random selection of items when
you read them, depending on if someone happened to give the items
the keyword you search on. With conferences and mailing lists,
on the other hand, you will get a number of interrelated entries,
and this is important because often the important information is
not in one single item, but in the ideas created by the interrelation
of items written by a number of people.