In article <15d0tiINN33b at nigel.msen.com>, emv at msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
wrote:
>> These "virtual moderated newsgroups" are roughly "clipping services". If
> you have access to comp.archives or bit.listserv.edtech you'll see what
> they look like more or less. It is at least as hard to be an editor
> for a journal where authors never send you anything and you have to root
> out the good stuff as it is to do a normal moderated, edited list.
Actually, I think the most important part of my suggestion is that a
fairly large "club" of people would automatically receive a relatively
short list of articles to categorize. They wouldn't be doing a huge
amount of work. No editing. Just put out a list of article numbers
as "recommended reading" and another list as "answered questions",
or whatever. People who volunteer to answer questions would join
a club which answers questions. The advantage over just reading the
group and posting answers is that (1) each person receives only a
fraction of the total questions, and (2) the question and proposed
answer could be passed by another reviewer.
Of course, sometimes only a few people might know the answer. In that
case, the club would report the question as "unanswered" and more people
would look at it.
> It would be a lot of work. I'm not sure just yet how you get
> the enterprise going, stable, and self-sustaining, since it would be a lot
> of work.
Automatically divide the work among a large number of people. Avoid
duplication of effort by using a centralized work distribution system.
This might be particularly appropriate for bionet groups, since there
is already a centralized site (or two) which process all articles, but
the idea is any group can set up their own club looking for articles
which match any critera.
All we need is software to scan the news files, extract article ID's,
and mail out the article ID's to club members. Club members then use
the article ID's to obtain the articles they should read. If a particluar
member doesn't reply, then the articles get sent to someone else. The
report sent back to the server is just a category for every article.
If an answer was posted, then send the article ID of the answer as well.
Some work on the newsreader could make this quite painless.
--
Edward J. Huff huff at mcclb0.med.nyu.edu (212)998-8465
Keck Laboratory for Biomolecular Imaging
NYU Chemistry Deptartment, 31 Washington Place, New York NY 10003
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