An auto-search/reply to some news queries could be
done. Whether it should be done is the question.
When we get everyone educated in the use of gopher
and wais software, this should become a non-issue.
Both provide easy ways to search a news archives
for any topic of interest.
It would be wiser to teach users of BioSci news that
there are easy ways to search back issues of the news
postings, rather than to restrict postings in some way.
This should be anyone's first step to answering
a question they think may have an easy answer or that
may have been asked before.
For example, there was just a question on bionet.software
about where to find PC molecular modelling software. And there
were some answers to this in the previous month on this same
group. Using gopher to IUBIo and it's link to the WAIS-indexed
bionet groups maintained by IG/Dave Kristofferson, I found
this list to answer the question:
BioSci-Bionet News.src: molecular model pcmodel pcmodel
12. gilbertd at s Re: Re: Molecular Graphics on PCs.
13. miski at KODA Re: Re: Molecular Graphics on PCs.
15. CZJ at CU.NIH Re: Re: Molecular Graphics on PCs.
16. jdboer at SOL Re: Re: PCMODEL.
17. CZJ at CU.NIH Re: Re: PCMODEL.
21. CZJ at CU.NIH Re: Re: Molecular Graphics on PCs.
If someone with network programming experience felt that it
would be easier for users if there were a "bionet.answers"
group for such, rather than rely on training people to use
gopher/wais, it would be possible to set up such a newsgroup
that would do nothing but take any question posted to it,
send that question to be searched automatically via wais,
and mail the responses back to the questioner.
Personally I don't think this effort is worth the time. Gopher
& Wais are easy enough to learn to use, and provide many benefits
besides searching bionet news archives.
-- Don
--
Don Gilbert gilbert at bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405
