In my mind, at least, the bionet hierarchy of newsgroups passed a
watershed today. Between when I went home last night and when I came
in today, there were 22 new messages posted on
bionet.molbio.methods-reagents; I now declare this a high volume
group! (During the same time frame, there were 13 messages posted to
bionet.software. Thus, methods-reagents is unusual but not absolutely
unique among bionet groups in it volume.)
If you accept the premise that a few of the bionet groups are
approaching high volume, then the job ahead for these groups is not the
traditional one among *BIONET* groups of drumming up business, but the
traditional one among *USENET* groups of handling the volume
intelligently. Before I give Dave Kristofferson an ulcer, I am not
proposing anything for the short- or medium-term; in that time scale,
I think we will all have to cope using the traditional usenet
approaches of intelligent newsreaders and learning how to use these
newsreaders effectively. However, I would like to initiate a
discussion of an idea I have for a long term solution.
I think a problem with the newsgroup paradyme which afflicts some of
the most potentially useful groups (e.g.
bionet.molbio.methods-reagents; comp.sys.mac.*; etc.) is that many
questions are asked that could be answered by hundreds of people in
the newsgroup, and that these relatively simple questions swamp the
newsgroup. Thus, people who can't stand the volume any more simply
unsubscribe. How big a problem is this? If a group, such as
methods-reagents, averages 20 messages a day, and if there is a 2 week
expiration, then the person who logs on infrequently (common in
biology) is confronted with 280 messages; more than most people are
willing to wade through. The solution I propose is change to a
paradyme which is heirarchical. A question from Baylor College of
Medicine posted to methods-reagents would initially be circulated only
within Houston. If no satisfactory response were received within,
say, 3 days, it then would be posted to the whole group. This paradyme
could obviously be expanded to more levels if and when this became
desireable.
How could this be implemented? It could be implemented today with a
fair amount of manual intervention. Regional groups (e.g. Houston,
Boston, New York, etc.) would be defined and the newsgroup software
would be set up in these regions with local posting as the default.
One or more moderators would be appointed within each area to forward
the message to the whole groups if the moderator determined that an
adequate response had not been obtained. In the future, I'm sure
software could be written to dramatically reduce the amount of manual
intervention. For example, a message would be posted locally, and
after three days, the poster would receive mail saying "please send
mail to methods-reagents containing the word "FORWARD msgID" if you
require additional response." (A similar approach could be used by
the moderator, above.)
Why should this idea come from the biology community, rather than
the computer science community, who have much more experience with
newsgroups? I think that, if implemented, this idea could benefit
many of the newsgroups. However, I think that computer scientists,
being much more comfortable with computers, are much more tolerant of
their imperfections. The intolerance of biologists might, then be the
catalyst for beneficial change.
How could (a vastly improved, refined version of) this change be
implemented? Obviously, this would require a collaboration between
biologists, who know what they want, and computer scientists, who can
produce it. Fortunately, it is my experience that just as a large
number of biologists are very fond of computers, a large number of
computer scientists are fond of biology, and thus such a collaboration
is quite possible.
What do y'all think?
(P.S. I decided, given the charter of bionet.general, this was the
correct group for these kinds of meta-discussions. I will gladly move
it if the will of the people is otherwise.)
--
David Steffen
Department of Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston TX 77030
Telephone = (713) 798-6655, FAX = (713) 790-0545
Internet = steffen at bcm.tmc.edu
