Newsgroups: comp.ai
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From: sylvere@divsun.unige.ch (Silvere Martin-Michiellot)
Subject: Re: Endless discussions leading to nowhere
Message-ID: <1995Mar1.130111.28359@news.unige.ch>
Sender: usenet@news.unige.ch
Reply-To: sylvere@divsun.unige.ch
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
References: <3j06ta$jae@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 13:01:11 GMT
Lines: 53


In article jae@mp.cs.niu.edu, rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <1995Feb28.184321.15530@news.unige.ch> sylvere@divsun.unige.ch (Silvere Martin-Michiellot) writes:
>
>>I had a really simple idea, in fact. I believe that the only solution is to
>>let people do new things without more investment in technologies.
>
>And I thought that AI was all about investing in technologies.
>

Yes, but what I mean is that we don't have much time to "play" with news.
So, every solution we choose should be straight forward.

>>                                                                  I mean that
>>using the news (and the newsgroups) with a bit more reflexion could be 
>>enough. For example, we could start a topic and everyone could reply on it
>>by REPLYING with the full text of the previous people, not indented. 
>
>No thanks.  This is a waste of everybody's time.  With a halfway
>decent threaded newsreader you can scan back and forth through the
>thread as it is.  Excessive quoting means that each reader has to
>skip past a lot that is familiar from earlier messages in the
>thread.  The main effect will be that many people will stop reading
>and add that subject line to their kill file.

It's not a matter of excessive quoting : each article would be sub divided in
paragraphs, you wouldn't quote but add more comments to a paragraph.

>
>>When the topic is over ( that is everyone agrees or everyone has said what he
>>wants), we would close the mail and put it on ftp like any article.
>
>On usenet a topic is never over, and there is never agreement. :-)
>

I didn't say that the article would be definitively closed.
Everyone could reopen it, and make his own contribution.

There is agreement on scientific evidences. And if you don't agree with each other,
the you write a new paragraph with the cons arguments to the ideas of the previous
writers. No need in fact to say "what X says is false" : just say "I believe" and
put down your ideas with your arguments in a new paragraph.


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

"Is anyone alive down there ?"

 

Silvere MARTIN-MICHIELLOT


