It's a compromise though.  I can tell you that vBulletin, for example, which includes said frankenstein threading, didn't add it because they thought it was usable or great.  They added it for one simple reason: some people love threading and request it to death.

More importantly, threading is useless if you're the only person using it threaded, and everyone else isn't.  Example:

- ABC
  - ABC
  - ABC
  - ABC
  - ABC
    - ABC
  - ABC
  - ABC
(where all of these are replies to each other.)

This is something a person who likes threading can't stand.  I don't blame them - when using a threaded system, the above is HORRIFIC.  As such, the compromise was made in the hopes of getting people to thread... it's not worked all that well imho.

There are other aspects involved, though, of course.

-[Unknown]


> True, and I can't stand threading either; replies are free to stray way off-topic, so you end up with posts that have a hundred replies in eight branches, all talking about something else.  Oh, the worst - the mongrel child of forums and NGs - forums on which you can have threading conversations.  Most confusing thing ever. 

That's what moderation is for.  With forum softwares, you'd simply "split" the topic/thread.... even if half of the conversation is already said and done.  I would think this is even *possible* with newsgroups.

As for the threading, it's done usually by the References or similar headers, to my recollection, not by the subject line.  I don't know of any software that threads by subject, off hand.

Threading is very logical - I'll agree.... but it's also flawed.  It has fundamental problems like wanting to answer to branches at once with the same sentence.  In some cases you can just post twice, but even that is obvious evidence of a problem.

At least, such is my opinion.  Some people love threading and always will... I'm just not one of them.

But, when was the last time you read a book that was threaded?  Seems they can keep everything in order with a linear format....

-[Unknown]


> It can get annoying when a thread wanders way off the original topic. Sometimes I will miss entire discussions because some ancient thread (eg [Sorta OT] License Restrictions) turned into something else(s) and I would just skip it because OE keeps putting replies under that thread even if the subject line changed. Is there some setting in OE to say "if the subject line differs start a new thread even if it is a reply to an existing message"? That would be nice.
> But in general threading to me is the only way to keep the conversations understandable. What bugs me is when two branches of a thread start getting mixed together and answers questions in the other - oy vey! 
> 
> 

> But, when was the last time you read a book that was threaded?  Seems they can keep everything in order with a linear format....

Speaking of which I used to love those choose-your-own-adventure books where you get to the bottom of a page and have a choice to make and option A goes to page X and option B goes to page Y and you wander your way through the book. That was fun - though backtracking could be a pain. Come to think of it at times this newsgroup is a pretty good choose-your-own-adventure...

ps - for kicks I renamed the subject :-)

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Walter" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
...
> I suppose if it didn't cost $75, I'd spring for it.  Isn't there any other generalized kind of way to search the newsgroup database?  Or is it just a very strange setup?

This works fairly well (if the post is old enough for it to be indexed): http://www.digitalmars.com/advancedsearch.html

-- 
Justin (a/k/a jcc7)
http://jcc_7.tripod.com/d/

"Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:d1qm31$15s9$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> "Walter" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:d1qfcp$vqc$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> > O.E.'s ability to search the news postings is lousy, but that is really
> > not
> > the fault of the newsgroup system but of O.E. I recently started using
X1
> > (www.x1.com) to search the newsgroups.
> I suppose if it didn't cost $75, I'd spring for it.

I have over 30,000 messages on my machine, something had to be done. I didn't like google's because it was connected to the internet. I simply do not want local search software doing anything on the internet.

> Isn't there any other
> generalized kind of way to search the newsgroup database?

Grep will work.

> Or is it just a very strange setup?

> > Other than the search, I find using a decent newsreader to work very
well,
> > better than any web forum software I've run across. Let's take slashdot,
> > for
> > instance. The only thing it has going for it is the ability to moderate
> > the
> > posts from 1 to 5. It's miserable to use otherwise.
>
> Slashdot's "forum" _is_ miserable.  It's nothing more than a sort of extended guestbook.  I take it you've never used a phpBB, yaBB, or
XMB-based
> forum then?

I have no idea what the ones I've used were implemented in.

> > The 'webalizer' web interface to the newsgroups is not so good, I can
> > agree
> > with that. Write a better one, and we'll use it!
>
> I'll leave that up to someone who has some experience with PHP.

It could be implemented in any language, including D.

"Unknown W. Brackets" <unknown@simplemachines.org> wrote: [...]
> But, when was the last time you read a book that was threaded? Seems they can keep everything in order with a linear format....
[...]

Ever seen a book in print consisting of preliminary thaughts full of errors, written by a couple of authors not having a chief editor?

Ever tried to write a road atlas not in a map format but a linear format---or even sell one?

You are right, that the capabilities of a threaded view on a topic are limited to a tree view on the topic. So that a merge of branches is tricky, when the best representation of the view on the topic advances from a tree to the more general form of a planar directed acyclic graph, which is best represented as a map---or as a road atlas? :-)

But even maps find their ends of capability when the best view turns out to be a non-planar graph.

However, I do not believe that you would create an argument, that driving cars or flying planes is a bad thing because you sometimes have road accidents or plane crashes and therefore the best way of transportation is to walk.

-manfred

P.S.: There is one argument that newsreaders currently are superior to public forums: one is able to score articles automatically and keep this scoring private without the need to offer it to the prying eyes on the net.

Yep - so called "textbooks" for one.  More errors than science fiction.  Yes, many many many times - they're called "directions" and very popular.  No.  People would only get confused, it would only complicate things even more.

I would suggest that flying cars and planes would be a bad thing if you wanted everyone driving them.  I know how to fly a plane myself and have done so, and it's a lot easier to screw up than driving a car.  Even a "flying car" would be easy to make mistakes with.

I can only imagine the complication to traffic law flying cars would introduce; and to think, cars - at least in America - have remained relatively constant for years upon years.

But, our clear and obvious difference is the thought of walking.  I consider threaded to be going by motorcycle; it has its advantages (in LA here you don't need to stay in a lane) but I'd rather just drive a car.  With that analogy, you'd likely agree, but disagree with my comparisons; this is a preference like so many other things.

In any case, I do very much enjoy walking.  It is an excercise more people should practice.

As well, the forum I write DOES store information about articles for you in a way superior to most other softwares.  As for being able to store the information locally, this is not as difficult a task as you imply, but the major problem is simply that cookies are limited in size and number per the specification.  HTTP doesn't allow the storage of local information in the way you (and I) would like.

The obvious counter is webmail (which can be accessed from anywhere); if you were right, webmail wouldn't be as popular as sliced bread - the information is not stored locally.  I even have legitamite clients doing business with Yahoo.  If that's not crazy I don't know what is.  So, storing a few bytes about what topics I like doesn't seem strange at all in comparison.

I write non-threaded forum software, and for a reason.  I've seen these arguments before.

-[Unknown]


> Ever seen a book in print consisting of preliminary thaughts full of errors, written by a couple of authors not having a chief editor?
> 
> Ever tried to write a road atlas not in a map format but a linear format---or even sell one?
> 
> You are right, that the capabilities of a threaded view on a topic are limited to a tree view on the topic. So that a merge of branches is tricky, when the best representation of the view on the topic advances from a tree to the more general form of a planar directed acyclic graph, which is best represented as a map---or as a road atlas? :-)
> 
> But even maps find their ends of capability when the best view turns out to be a non-planar graph.
> 
> However, I do not believe that you would create an argument, that driving cars or flying planes is a bad thing because you sometimes have road accidents or plane crashes and therefore the best way of transportation is to walk.
> 
> -manfred
> 
> P.S.: There is one argument that newsreaders currently are superior to public forums: one is able to score articles automatically and keep this scoring private without the need to offer it to the prying eyes on the net.

Yes, and in Outlook Express, newsgroups are sorted by thread by default - if not, just choose "View->Current View->Group Messages by Conversation" to get it working.

Rob

"Chris Sauls" <ibisbasenji@gmail.com> wrote in message news:d1pn19$617$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>I don't know about Outlook or any others, but in Mozilla Thunderbird I just use the "View->Sort by->Threaded" option from the menu bar, and voila, messages are grouped in a tree, just like in a branching web forum.
>
> -- Chris Sauls
>
> bobef wrote:
>> I use my favourite news reader but the link in the left frame says
>> "Forum" not
>> something else... And I still prefer forum than newsreader... I find it
>> easier
>> to follow conversation when every article is following the one it's
>> replyign to
>> rather than reading separete news... This is my opinion of course...
>> 

"J C Calvarese" <jcc7@cox.net> wrote in message news:d1qrjj$1ass$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> This works fairly well (if the post is old enough for it to be indexed):

Which is precisely the problem with it ;)

"Walter" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:d1r77b$1m1n$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> I have over 30,000 messages on my machine, something had to be done. I didn't like google's because it was connected to the internet. I simply do not want local search software doing anything on the internet.

Not even the google desktop was OK?

> Grep will work.

Bless you.

Oh, grep is apparently the name of a program.  Those posixheads sure have the funniest names for things, don't they?

To tell the truth, I've no idea where I'd even begin to search the NG database with a commandline utility.

> I have no idea what the ones I've used were implemented in.

A very large majority of the forums out there use some variant of yaBB or phpBB.  There are others, but they all look and function very much the same. Nonetheless, they're all lightyears ahead of something like the slashdot "forum."

> It could be implemented in any language, including D.

And you can embed compiled D programs in websites..?  I thought you meant writing a better web interface, in which case a scripting language would probably be the best choice.