From: jolico@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Lucie Jolicoeur)
Newsgroups: news.software.readers,news.misc,comp.misc,comp.human-factors
Subject: *SURVEY* on NEWSreaders
Keywords: News, newsreaders
Date: 22 Jan 93 03:21:17 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Universite de Montreal


	[Apologies for all the irrelevant newsgroups...]

	Hello !  As part of my M.Sc., I am gathering information on
present and future directions for newsreaders.  If you'd be kind
enough to answer the following ten questions, it would be a great help.
Your answers will be kept private.  Let me know if there are any
similar studies available.  All answers should be sent by e-mail to
the address below.  Thank you in advance for your time !

	Lucie Jolicoeur <jolico@iro.umontreal.ca>

P.S.: If there is sufficient interest, I'll summarize the answers and
      post them to news.software.readers.
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NEWS SURVEY

A) USER TYPE

   1- How long have you been reading Usenet News?

   2- How often do you read the News?

   3- How many newsgroups do you usually read?
      How many would you read if you had no time constraint?

   4- What are the 5 main newsgroups you read?  (in decreasing order
       of importance)

   5- What are the reasons why you read the News?  (in decreasing order
       of importance)

B) NEWSREADERS

   1- a) What newsreaders have you used?
      b) Which one are you presently using, and on what platform
          (Macintosh, Unix, etc.) ?

   2- What features of these newsreaders do you like best? (best first)

   3- What features do you like least?  (worst first)

   4- What features would you like to see in a future newsreader?
       (most wanted first)

   5- Suppose that there exists a newsreader that can adapt to your
       personal interests.  Each of the articles is evaluated in order
       to present them in a way that reflects your interests.  (An
       example of such an adaptative mechanism is the "killfile", where
       you provide a list of subjects you don't want to read.  The
       killfile corresponds to alternatives Ib, IIa and IIIa.)
      Which alternatives do you prefer ?
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      I-   a) The newsreader highlights the interesting articles.
           b) The reader eliminates the uninteresting articles.
           c) The reader uses a combination of these two strategies.

      II-  a) You alone are responsible for updating the representation
               of your interests.
           b) The adaptation is transparent; the system finds out by
               itself what your interests are by observing you.
           c) You collaborate with the system to create the
               representation of your interests.

      III- a) The system interacts very little with you but adapts to
               your long-term interests.
           b) The system interacts a lot with you to allow immediate
               adaptation as in databases (dBase).
           c) The system combines these two strategies: it gradually
               adapts to your general interests, but also accepts
               interactive queries.

      IV-  Other suggestions:

C) COMMENTS
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Xref: sparky news.software.readers:2902 news.misc:2186 news.future:948