Aittvax.174
net.news
utzoo!decvax!ittvax!swatt
Sun Jan  3 17:40:33 1982
YANS (Yet Another Newsgroup Suggestion)
This seems like a more profitable discussion than net censorship.
Does anyone out there familiar with the Library of Congress scheme
care to summarize the pros and cons?

The matter of keeping a LC dictionary around should not be a
major discouragement -- once assembled it can be kept current
with far less effort than the map of UNIX sites on USENET.


	From decvax!duke!reed!valer Sat Jan  2 08:31:26 1982
	Alan--
		I was talking to Dave K. the other day, lamenting
	the proliferation of newsgroups, and he pointed out that
	what is really lacking is a proper categorization scheme.
	Hence, I advocate the adoption of the Library of Congress
	system.  It has the advantages of being well known, expandable
	in a predictable manner, and committed to expansion for many
	years to come.  Note the ease of not receiving undesirable
	newsgroups!-- "No, I am not interested in literary criticisms
	of Christmas lyrics" and so forth.
		I admit there are some disadvantages.  The mapping
	from intelligible subjects to the appropriate numbers would
	require a rather well refined catalogue, and the questions
	of whether each article is entitled to a unique number of its
	own deserves some thought.  If the latter is true, then I suppose
	the Library of Congress would have to get on the network in
	order to keep abreast of the latest developments....
		I trust all is well, etc.
						--Jim Valerio

	From cbosgd!mark Sun Jan  3 17:25:11 1982
	To: duke!swd, duke!trt,
	    ittvax!swatt, ucbvax!william
	Subject: Re:  YANS (Yet Another Newsgroup Suggestion)
	Cc: reed!valer, lauren@ucla-security, ucbvax!r:glickman

	This is interesting - why not suggest it to net.news and see
	what people think?  I agree that the library of congress
	scheme, with numbers and a few letters, is more powerful and
	less intelligible than the current scheme.  I also suspect that
	some other problems would arise:
	(1) The current scheme lets you specify the distribution scope
	    with the first part of the newsgroup name.
	(2) The LC scheme might not allow very specific subgroups
	    (could it distinguish between fa.space and net.columbia, or
	    between net.jokes and net.jokes.q)?  I don't know the
	    answer to this.
	(3) Everybody would have to keep a LC dictionary handy to be
	    able to use netnews.  (It's just about to the point where
	    you need a netnews newsgroup list now anyway.)

	I don't know the answers here, and I'm not very familiar with LC.
	But it seems like food for thought anyway.

		Mark

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