ClariNet was the first commerical content provider on the Internet,
starting way back in 1989. It took wire service news (at various
times, from the AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters), classified
them into Usenet newsgroups, and allowed sites to subscribe to those
newsgroups for a fee.
For a considerable time I was primarily responsible for article
classification. I had written a proposal suggesting a finer-grained
classification system than the newsgroups allowed, which was not accepted
by ClariNet's management. At one point I realized I was being a bit
overzealous in advocating my proposal. This was my attempt to poke fun
at myself.
ClariNet News and Time
By
Aaron Priven, 1 April 1997
Time, Usenet, and
Newspapers
ClariNet's news has been, and is still, chiefly
delivered in Usenet format. One of
the features of Usenet is that it
is divided by subject, and not by time. (Most other
conferencing
systems work this way as well.) The first story on January 1 directly
follows the last story from December 31, with nothing to mark the
change. Indeed, it can
be that stories on different dates are mixed
in together, due to embargoes and the
delays caused by
editing.
Newspapers, and even most online news services, do not
work this way. A newspaper
is primarily classified by date. Today's
newspaper contains today's news, and the
strongest of divisions
separates it from yesterday's news.
It is possible that since
most people are used to having today's news separate from
yesterday's, that ClariNet news is counterintuitive and less usable
for that reason.
It may be desirable to separate news by day, rather
than by subject.
Implementation
Possibly, this could be
done by modifying the web extraction program, providing clear
delimitation between days in only that form of the news. However,
that plan is for
another day than this. Here I will discuss
potential implementation proposals within
the Usenet form.
To
implement this within Usenet, it will be necessary to create new
newsgroups associated
with the days. There are two basic questions
to be answered. The first is whether
one chooses relative or
absolute dating. The second is whether one chooses to crosspost the
news to a new set of date-specific groups, or to incorporate the date
into
the existing group names themselves. These questions will need
to be answered before
an implementation plan is
produced.
Relative or absolute dating.
With relative
dating, one creates groups such as clari.news.today,
clari.news.yesterday,
and the clari.news.days-ago hierarchy
(c.n.days-ago.two, c.n.days-ago.three, and
so on, up to
c.n.days-ago.twenty-one). With absolute dating, one creates a
separate group for each date: clari.news.y1997.april.d1,
clari.news.y1997.april.d2, and so
on. (Unfortunately Usenet group
components cannot consist solely of numbers.)
Each has its
advantages and disadvantages. Relative dating requires no regular
change
in group names. The groups themselves would stay the same
from day to day. However,
the news in those groups must change
regularly. This would require canceling every
article at midnight
every day and sending out a replacement in the previous day's group.
(So that, for example, at midnight all the contents of
clari.news.today would be
canceled and reissued in
clari.news.yesterday.) One unanswered question is which
midnight to
use. Most of our customers are North American, so midnight ET might
be most appropriate.
However, as we expand into world markets it may
be necessary to use midnight GMT.
Or perhaps it will be necessary to
have several editions, each with a separate midnight: European time,
Japanese time, and so on. The mechanism for doing this last
would be
difficult.
Absolute dating does not require the repeated
cancelation and reissuance of articles.
It does, however, require
the issuance of new newsgroups each day. This would require
more
cooperation on the part of news administrators than we have had
previously.
It would, of course, be possible to specify the
newsgroup names ahead of time, so that
an administrator would only
have to create the new groups once every few months.
This would
result in a lot of empty groups; however, unlike some of our
currently
empty groups, this would at least be intuitive (it should
not be surprising that a group dated
three weeks from now should be
empty). It would still be preferable to have the groups
created
automatically each day, if news administrators will allow
it.
Crossposting or incorporation into current
groups.
Essentially, this is the question whether these new date groups
are to be an adjunct
to the current system, or are to be
incorporated into the existing system itself.
Crossposting would
imply that all news stays in the current group set, but is simply
added to a new set of groups chosen by date. This would be
relatively simple, but would
not yield results for most of the
readers, who will certainly not want only
to have
date-oriented selection. (Even newspapers have sections for
particular kinds
of stories.)
The other alternative is to create
a separate hierarchy for each day: clari.today.biz.briefs,
clari.today.biz.earnings, and so on, up to
clari.days-ago.twenty-one.world.terrorism
and
clari.days-ago.twenty-one.world.top. This would provide the maximum
benefit for those readers who want to find news by date as well as by
subject. However,
this would require a substantial number of new
groups. For the relative dating system,
it would be necessary to
create 9,780 new groups, plus rename the current 489 groups
to
include the "today" marker. For the absolute system, it would be
necessary to create
489 new groups each day (although it may be
possible to only send out newgroup messages
for those groups that
are actually used; this could mean a significant reduction
on
weekends). This is not a minor undertaking.
It may be possible to
have some compromise between the two sets. For example, there
could
be only a few categories marked with dates, perhaps something like
the one-star
set: clari.today.biz, clari.today.usa, and so on.
However, these are still likely
to have great volume. Creating a set
with reasonable volume is likely to be rather detailed;
not so much
so as the full set, but close to it.
Conclusion
These
questions of which groups to use must be answered before any
implementation
plans begin, as the implications are serious.
However, attracting readership is very
important, and we must do
what we can to do this. This may be a first step.
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