From: Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 13:34:08 CDT
On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 08:38:18AM +0100, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> Brad Templeton said:
> > But if, as many would contend, our newsgroup names are a relic of
> > an early 1980s design and no longer the best solution, why spend a lot
> > of effort improving what they can do, espcially if it means making much of
> > the software out there have to update?
>
> Because I've seen no evidence that that's the case. If you're right, build
> it, watch the users flock to it with enthusiasm, and then propose
> standardisation. But I'm skeptical.
It's what I have come to identify as the great problem of USENET. USENET
is 23 year old technology that is almost entirely without innovation when
it comes to things that would change the format of its general messages.
Since B news, the main innovation in the format was the References line
(which took about 8 years to really get working) and the introduction from
E-mail of Mime, which is still roundly rejected by many, though at least
most newsreaders now support it. There have been some side innovations
(nocem, pgpverify) and new social structures in new hierarchies.
Supersedes was also added but is rarely used and in any event has a design
bug that is still unfixed.
Why should USENET have so little innovation? Can you really suggest it was
because it was designed perfectly to start with? When every other network
related technology has gone through generation after generation of innovation?
USENET's problem is that every single poster interacts with every single
feed site and every single client. So it's hard to make a change as
every other bit of software has to make the change. This allows
changes which make no difference, but things like changing the format of
an article or the name of a newsgroup become next to impossible.
If we could fix one thing about USENET, to me it would be to allow easy
subnets to foster innovation. Mime multipart/alternative is about the
only change in such a direction, and it got shouted down the first time
people tried to use it.