From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Archive format at mit.edu
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 23:17:26 GMT

In article <LWVANELS.92Jul22114107@fionavar.mit.edu> lwvanels@MIT.EDU writes:
>brant@seq.uncwil.edu (AT-Dreamer) writes:
>>   What is the deal?
>>   I don't understand all the junk in front [_89_90_3].......
>>   why?
>
>Spaces and other characters in the title of the posting that would be
>potentially problematic in filenames are replaced by underscores.  The titles
>of Eugene's FAQ postings start with something like [l/m 4/15/92], so you'll
>see the filenames of the archives starting with something like [l_m_4_15_92].

The FAQs have their Subject: lines set up so that the majority of readers
can use what are called Killfiles.  Killfiles enable you to "not-read"
a particular set of posts based on some search pattern.  Unfortunately,
the default pattern searched is the Subject: line (as opposed to Newsgroup
[which some news.readers lacks like Notes in the H-P environment]).
Any other attempt requires Killfile editing which most of you would not
want to do. [Real wilderness.]

News systems with Killfiles typically only search the first 24 characters,
so a "Last modified" date must be inserted in that section.  This means that
one is spared looking at a panel until a change has occurred (I should use
change bars, but have not gotten around to writing some software to do this.
[I also don't like posting stupid diff articles.]
The decision to use characters like "[]/" which have significance in a
Unix environment was made by a panel of designers.  Any character selected
is likely to have conflicts in SOME OS.  (Of course any jabs at Unix
competing OSes like VMS and CMS are purely coincidental [I regard Unix was
the victor of those past conflicts, simply time now, soon readers will have
never heard of systems like MPX, MPE, EXEC*8, etc.].)

Only a highly unintelligent reader, I mean newbie, would realize that
you don't have to read to the contents of an entire article (for instance,
the so-called 'n' or 'next' key, or even asking for help), and that
you can use news to select, search, save, and SKIP, etc. articles. The problem
is similar to the studies indicating that only 10% of the functionality
of word processors is used.  We can tell numerous things about readership
reading habits (re: bears, giardia, gear, song, memorial, etc., a decent
trip to a library can answer 95% of the questions in r.b., but you have a
right to raise them regardless).
Even the host name, panel position #, the fact that TABs are embedded in
Subject: lines, that I even post or hover w/o posting, that other groups are
used a controls, etc. have significance.

P.S.  The amazing thing to me is that FAQs have really taken off and
people like them.  I mean in many ways, I DON'T like them, the problem is
the news interface lacking memory.  Unfortunately, the problem is not easily
solved (conferences and journals now exist on conferencing). And r.b. is
one of the testing grounds.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
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A Ref: Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, vol. 1, G. Polya