From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: EXECUTION of DECUS Standards
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 16:27:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.160250@mccall.com>, tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes...
>.....
>Sounds like you need more conferences. Proper use of conferences and subject
>lines should allow you to easily select the issues you are familiar with. ...

	You miss my point. With DCS, I as the sender make one decision on
	who should read the message. With NOTES, everybody who happens to
	read NOTES would have to access that conference and actively decide
	if they wanted to read that note.

	Also, Notes doesn't auto-forward. My DCS mail is automagically forwarded
	to my VAX mail account here. I don't have to pour thru 40-odd news
	groups to glean 3 or 4 really pertinent messagews.

>No. But then I might not read a conference devoted to symposia, and probably
>wouldn't read an article entitled:
> 
>Deadline for DECUS store for Spring '93 symposium

	But what if you read the same note/article in alt.decus.symposia, 
	alt.decus.store, alt.decus.DAARC, alt.decus.L&T, alt.decus.VAX,
	alt.decus. .... (well you get the idea.) DCS handles the equivalent
	of cross-posting to multiple groups much better. I 1 message, not N.
> 
>And the "open" ones are only open to those with DCS access.
> 
	And to ones on DECUServe.

>Why not. How many is too many? Depending on the amount of newsletters traffic,
>though, it might be sufficient to create a single newsletters group. You only
>need to split them if there is enough traffic that it is a problem. Subject
>lines are used to select which articles in a group to actually read.

	Actually, NOTES is much better than Ness in one respect. Instead of
	Subject lines and "In response to... types. when you have an entirely
	new topic, you start a new stream of notes with note nn.0 Subsequent
	RESPONSES to the seed note are entered as nn.1, nn.2, etc.

	So When I read a notes stream, I get things all new notes presented
	to me sorted by topic AND IN CORRECT CHRONOLIGICAL ORDER. You ob-
	jected to mail coming in in chronological order. How many times have
	you seen news postings where the response to one note appears before
	the original item at your location because of posting delays? Does
	it screw up the sense of the note? For me it dose.

>A properly fine-tuned hierarchy can successfully trade off number of groups
>with the amount of traffic in each group. 

	Show me a well tuned newsgroup on the net, and I will agree with you.

>email can always be used to talk to a limited number of people, 

	Correct. That's what DCS is best at. Steering committee level etc.

>but decisions made in email are by definition closed.

	Well, my favorite sig works that way. The steering committee makes
	the decisions. They are closed in the sense that everbody and their
	uncle on the Net doesn't get to vote, however the decisions are (by
	my definition,) still open if the RESULTS are posted to an open
	NOTES conference.

>Incidently, exactly why is DCS distinct from DECUServe and limited to particular
>people? It sounds like the private stuff is in email anyway. It may not be true,
>but the perception among at least some non-leaders is that DCS is a way of
>keeping our noses out of "their" (leadership's) business.

	Although DCS and DECUServe are on different processors, both are
	accessible from the DECUServe end. To preclude giving everyone with
	a DCS account free DECUServe access, (with no connect costs,) those
	with DCS accounts can only access the limited DCS notes conference.
	However anyone on DECUServe can access any of the DCS conferences,
	provided that they are not closed.

>The whole point of notes and news is to help manage a large base of information.
>In my estimation, news at least (don't know about notes) does a pretty good job
>of this. 

	I use both. IMHO Notes does a much better job because it does a better
	job of sorting various conversation threads, mainly because I can start
	a new thread, (equivalent to creating vms.xxx.pdp11.IAS) without having
	to go to the gods of the net and beseach them to start it for me.
	
   Frank R. Borger - Physicist    __       Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___      Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
  Center for Radiation Therapy   | |_) _   
                                   | \|_)  The covers of this book are too far
    "Birthplace of Softball"          |_)  apart. Book review by Ambrose Bierce
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