Re: *** Post of the Month for July 2005: Vote Now!


Tristan Miller wrote:
> Greetings.
>
> In article <1123694110.489000.125120@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mike
> Dunford wrote:
> > Tristan Miller wrote:
> >> For those of us who want to use our own newsreader rather than the
> >> shoddy Google Groups interface, how about providing generic URIs to the
> >> threads?
> [snip]
> > However, over the years providing a link to the permanent web-based
> > archive of usenet posts (first DejaNews, now Google) has become the
> > accepted standard for citing posts, just as providing a link to a major
> > online bookseller is the accepted standard when citing a book online.
> > This is because the web-based service maintains the post indefinitely,
> > while many news servers delete posts after a certain number of days, or
> > only maintain the last x number of posts. The Google Groups link is the
> > most stable and accessible format available for citing an individual
> > post.
>
> I think your criticism is misguided -- it applies to URLs, not URIs as I
> was suggesting. True, a URL of the form
> <nntp://some-news-host.com/message@id> is going to be of limited
> usefulness as presumably the article will eventually be deleted from
> some-news-host.com's cache. However, a URI such as <news:message@id>
> remains valid indefinitely, since it uniquely identifies the message in
> question, not simply some location where it may or may not reside.

As you have pointed out, the message id is incorporated into the google
groups URL, and is readily obtainable through those means. A
<news:message@id> may be _valid_ indefinitely, but it is not likely to
be 1-click accessable indefinitely. The Google URL is more likely to
provide a stable, 1-click means for accessing that message.

> In principle it is trivial to resolve a news: URI to a Google Groups URL.
> In fact, in practice this is also trivial, depending on one's software.
> I'd be surprised if Mozilla and Firefox (possibly using some extension)
> can't do this.

Not everyone uses Mozilla/Firefox, and not everyone has the computer
skills to set up a way to convert URIs to valid URLs. Since the entire
point of the POTM competition is to make a selected few posts widely
available, it makes sense to do so using a method that will work for
everyone, including those who have lower levels of computer skills. A
Google Groups URL does this, and does it well. You may not _like_ the
format that it uses to present the threads but you _can_ locate them.
(And it should be a trivial matter for you to extract the message-id
and switch you your reader of choice.) A message-id is not a format
that everyone is familiar with, and not everyone will necessarily be
able to access them.

You are suggesting a valid method for documenting posts, and it is one
that some readers - especially those of us with lots of experience on
usenet - might find convenient. However, at least in the case of POTM,
the KISS principle should be followed, and that calls for using Google
Groups links.

--Mike Dunford

.

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