From: Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com)
Date: Tue Jun 05 2001 - 18:12:04 CDT
On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 03:58:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> writes:
>
> > Now, no way was ever defined for a newsreader to understand how to get
> > these articles, which was a mistake, I think, since it would have been
> > good for newsreaders to be able to offer a menu of FAQs and other such
> > files to the user at any time.
>
> I personally think web browsers are much better at doing this.
For the majority of people on USENET, their newsreader is a web browser,
and for most of the rest, a web browser can be conveniently invoked.
The truth is that today, the experience of using a newsgroup calls for more
than just a newsreader that can present the serialized articles for you
and keep track of what you've read and and haven't read.
When reading a newsgroup, both the user (and all the other readers) benefit
if the newsreader can quickly call up FAQs, charters and posting guidelines,
probably in a browser, and in fact do it before posting, such as the first
time a person posts to a group, or when they join, etc.