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In lugnet.admin.general, Thomas Main writes:
> [...] One thing I really don't understand is who goes to the trouble of
> rating articles that everyone realizes are not important....like maybe the
> "me too" posts (in general groups, not the new LEGO ones) or auction posts
> that just convey information about an auction. To me, it seems like a big
> waste of time on the part of the person rating.
Probably depends on how quickly they can rate articles. Through the website,
it's a little cumbersome to give input on everything -- a lot of scrolling and
mouse-clicking and waiting, etc. But using a custom newsreader client, it can
be as fast as a single keystroke.
For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article. If I could
(theoretically) actually read 1 article per second, I could actually rate 1
article per second. But my brain doesn't work that fast. :)
My overhead for rating something I've read is probably 1/2 second per article.
I have to hit some key to advance to the next article anyway, so it might as
well be one of the rating keys. If I don't have an opinion, I just hit a non-
rating skip-to-the-next-article key and don't mark the article.
> As a consumer, I'd rather not see the ratings at all ;) Usually I read
> LUGNET through a newsreader, so I don't see the ratings, but occasionally I
> peek at the web page and see that this or that article was rated a certain
> way and I think, "Wow, someone has a lot of extra time on their hands," or
> "Why would someone rate this article so low," or "Wow, that rating seems
> petty and vindictive to me...I wonder who is doing all this rating anyway?"
How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
> As a producer...well, I think it's best if I don't rate posts because I
> don't want to mess up averages by giving out 100s and I don't want to have
> to think a long time to try to come up with a number between 0 and 100
> (particularly, if, you're like me and would rate the same message "40" one
> day and "60" another depending on when you read it, what you were thinking
> about at the time, and all the other random things that contribute to
> scoring subjectively.)
Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> For example, if I want to rate an article 70, I just press the "7" key on my
> keyboard and it queues up a 70 for that article (which it sends to the server
> in the background) and then immediately shows me the next article.
Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this available?
It sounds *extremely* useful!
> How about search results? Sometime down the road (a long way, probably) the
> search results could take the ratings into account (at your discretion at
> search-time) and you could ask the search engine to give higher priority to
> articles with higher scores. Would you find that useful?
Yep! Yep! Yepyepyepyepyepyep! Useful! Yepyepyep!! Yeeeep!
Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-Street
alien impersonations :)
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
(Search for "GUI streaming newsreader Jeremy Sproat Dan Boger"...)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine,
If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking of
my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then fine!
Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead -
Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few java
instances it crawls even more..
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> > my particular home machine,
>
> If you mean that it would be virtually impossible for me to do some hacking
> of my own to get it working, or you're embarrassed to share the source, then
> fine! Otherwise, I'm still interested :P
It's not particularly bad code or anything like that, it's just that it was
an evolve-mode prototype -- didn't know Curses at all before digging in (still
don't know it well) and wasn't sure it would even end up working. It also is
still using an older undocumented pre-avid.cgi gateway to the server for its
incoming feed, so until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
running (I just haven't the time to support it).
> Yup - these are cool developments, but ideally I want something low overhead
> - Linux has started thrashing on my p166 already, and once I start up a few
> java instances it crawls even more..
What I made is pretty low-overhead -- it just uses Perl5 and the Curses.pm
Perl library and runs probably any Linux (although many of the colors are
currently hard-coded for my settings) and typically consumes about 2-4 MB of
RAM while active. Lemme think about what would be involved in making it
releaseable...
--Todd
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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Todd Lehman writes:
> until I update that to avid.cgi, I can't release the code.
> But maybe it would be a useful example client if cleaned up a bit and released
Funky!
> with the understanding of no little or support being offered to get it up and
> running (I just haven't the time to support it).
Yup - I forgot to mention that I expected no support for it :) In fact, if
someone doesn't take up the challenge before me (I couldn't justify it until
June, so it's likely they will!), it would make a good way to get a bit more
perl experience.
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
Well, the Java client is mine, but I'm not considering adding a rating
capability until after I can get posting to work (1). Dan is working on a
non-Java client (Perl?), with which he does plan on supporting article rating.
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. Gotta learn cookies. Actually, I just gotta take the time to implement
cookies using java.net.URLConnection, but I've been swamped lately.
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On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 23:07:52 GMT Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote
concerning 'Re: Article rating (was: Re: the latest news)':
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but is this
> > available? It sounds *extremely* useful!
>
> Mine is a horrible hack crufted together to run in text mode with Curses on
> my particular home machine, but Jeremy Sproat has written a general-purpose
> platform-independent newsreader in Java, and I think he might be considering
> adding rating capability to it. (Or was that Dan Boger?)
I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings... Also, is
it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> I'm still working on my perl/tk based streamer... it's coming along
> slowly, since work keeps bugging me. What about addind the
> X-lugnet-rating header to avid.cgi, though? Without it, the client
> can rate, but won't be able to see other people's ratings...
The avid.cgi script is meant to serve things continuously, not backward in
time, so adding the header to that doesn't fit its design very well. (It
would also add load to it.) (But serving the ratings via something specially
constructed to handle back-in-time or since-some-time queries efficiently
through another separate script is planned.)
> Also, is
> it ok for the client to use the raw.cgi to get specific messages, when
> needed? Or is that not a part of the published API?
It's not a particularly streamlined script like avid.cgi is, but it's not
particularly inefficient either. It's more efficient than the HTML display
of articles, for one thing, but still really intended for only interactive
display.
It doesn't have a published API, and it wasn't intended to be called from
user agents other than web browsers, but if you access it randomly (i.e.,
right when your app needs to display it to you) without hammering on it
(fetching zillions of articles in rapid succesion), it shouldn't be a problem.
In that sense, your agent would be acting like a browser.
For fetching multiple articles, instead of using raw.cgi, open an NNTP
connection and send:
1. GROUP <group> to change into a group, followed by
2. ARTICLE <artnum> to get the article data.
Repeat at 2 if fetching multiple messages from a single group, otherwise
repeat at 1 if fetching multiple messages from different groups.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Actually, if that included fuller search capabilities as well (date, author,
> subject, etc) then I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one doing bad Seasame-
> Street
> alien impersonations :)
No, you wouldn't be alone!! I'll join with Big Bird any day for those
enhancements.
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> [...]
> Well, maybe it's not something for you then. (Certainly, it's not for
> everyone, because it does take a bit of time and concentration sometimes.)
Yikes, I gotta watch my wording. There's nothing to read between the lines
there -- those are two separate statements. I realise that rating takes time
and that not everyone has time or wants to spend it.
> What if, instead of giving out 0's and 100's, you could give out either a
> 25 or a 75? (Or some other pair?) Would you find that less intimidating?
Intimidating was a poor word choice... I mean, would you find that more
inviting (or less unpleasant)?
--Todd
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