G'day folk,
May I add my viewpoint? I don't think that the volume on METHODS is
too high for people check their news daily or twice-daily (ever read
comp.lang.c ?). I suppose that we could answer the common questions
by mail instead of post, and that would reduce some volume.
Some of us (me for one!), have no access to UNIX newsreaders (my
tagline is not a putdown of UNIX or its users, but a fact that I use
as a self-directed joke). I read news on a VAX which gets its news
from a server of some description. The campus where I work is 10 km
from our campus where the computer centre is. I have never even seen
the building which houses the mainframes I access from my expensive
386 VT102 emulator.
My point? I have no access to "threaded newsreaders" of sufficient
capability or speed which would make following threads workable. I
have NO control of the distribution of my messages wrt local, regional
or international. I'm just lucky that I no longer have to use email
as a method of keeping up with bionet WHICH MANY OF US STILL HAVE TO
DO! So your ideas for limiting news are stimulating, thoughtful and
interesting but totally unfeasible for people like me at the moment.
It may be tempting to say, "tough luck!, keep up". However, I'm a
bench biologist not a computer scientist (and we're talking about
reading METHODS here), so that's not really justifiable here (yet).
If the system becomes too esoteric, you may lose many valued netfolk.
John Nash | Email: Nash at biologysx.lan.nrc.ca.
National Research Council of Canada | Mail to "num208jn at mbds.nrc.ca"
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | is forwarded automatically.
Disclaimer: All opinions are mine, not NRC's!
Confession: I've NEVER used a UNIX machine!
