HAM Radio 1/HamRadio.cdr/misc/pkthints/pd91037.txt

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Date: Fri,  8 Feb 91 04:30:03 PST
From: Packet-Radio Mailing List and Newsgroup </dev/[e-mail]>
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Subject: Packet-Radio Digest V91 #37
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Packet-Radio Digest         Fri,  8 Feb 91       Volume 91 : Issue  37

Today's Topics:
                         'To:' field anarchy!
                             infomation

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policies or positions of any party.  Your mileage may vary.  So there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Feb 91 12:28:36 EST
From: [e-mail] (Barry McLarnon DGBT/DIP)
Subject: 'To:' field anarchy!
To: [e-mail]

Adrian Godwin writes:
>In article <04.Feb.91.14:12:43.GMT.#[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>("Pete Lucas, NCS-TLC, Holbrook House, Swindon") writes:
>>Greetings; i have recently been having a battle of wits :-) with a lot of
>>users in the UK who seem intent on addressing their messages to 'ALL@GBR'
>>or some similarly uninformative destination. I have done a count  of the
>>messages on several BBS; something around 30-40% of messages are sent to
>>'ALL' !!!
>
>You hero!
>
>However, I feel the real problem is due to the use of a mail-like interface
>for bulletin traffic. It isn't sufficient just to reduce the use of ALL,
>but also (as you show by your suggestion of a preferred list) to limit
>bulletin 'destinations' to a number of names that are universally
>recognised, rather than using the field as a sort of summarised subject.

There is a 'preferred list' which has circulated around the NA BBS network,
at least.  I checked several hundred bulletins on my BBS last night, and
found that 48% of them were addressed to ALL.  Of the remaining two dozen
or so different To: field entries, many, but by no means all, were from
the preferred list.  I don't think the majority of sysops do much to
encourage their users to make use of the list.  As you point out, even if
use of such a list were universal, it doesn't really address the problem,
which is the monolithic mail-like interface.

>It surprises me that this hasn't already happened, as many packet users
>(and more especially packet BBS writers) must also be familiar with telephone
>BBSs and surely appreciate the advantages of grouping bulletins in an
>_intentionally_ restricted list of areas.

It surprises me too, since it's so glaringly obvious that this is *major*
shortcoming of BBS software.  I wrote an article on this topic a little over
a year ago, which was fairly widely circulated (I think) and reprinted in
Gateway.  I had quite a few enthusiastic comments from users, but I got no
reaction from BBS software authors (with one exception, but his software is
not widely used).

>I'd therefore suggest that you tackle the BBS writers to provide categories
>to which bulletins may be addressed. In order to provide maximum anarchy -
>if that's how the users like it - I'd suggest that a message _could_ be
>written to a previously unknown group, but it would result in a warning
>to the effect "Nobody's ever heard of this subject. Post somewhere else if
>you want your bulletin to have a fighting chance of being read".

Good luck.  At least one of the BBS writers reads this list/newsgroup -
perhaps he would offer up some comments.

Personally, I think the packet BBS will eventually go the way of the dodo.
Instead of beating on the BBS writers to get them to transform their sow's
ears into something useable, let's concentrate our efforts on building a
proper NNTP-based news and SMTP-based mail network.  Then put *real* mail
and newsreading tools in the hands of the users, and get some nice servers
for files, callbook, etc, up and running.  They'll never go back to the
BBS... :-)

Barry VE3JF


Barry McLarnon                  |  Internet: [e-mail]
Communications Research Centre  |  PBBS: [e-mail]
Ottawa, Canada  K2H 8S2         |  AMPRnet: [e-mail]3jf [44.135.96.7]

------------------------------

Date: 7 Feb 91 13:21:31 CST (Thu)
From: ssi!tao![e-mail] (gdk)
Subject: infomation
To: [e-mail]

hello,

would you send me some information on joining the packet-radio
mailing list?

thanks.

    gary kline

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End of Packet-Radio Digest
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