Jim Henderson escribió:
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:51:31 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> 
>> None of those forums have proper threading. People add their posts to
>> threads, they don't reply to other posts. Converting that to a tree like
>> it's shown on newsgroups wouldn't work at all.
> 
> Actually, it can be configured to work properly with NNTP - I'm in the 
> process of converting some private newsgroups to use that as a web 
> interface.
> 

It's more about how people use it than technical issues. If the web 
interface has such a thing as "reply to this *thread*", people will 
click on it; and where in the tree would that post go?

Also, really long threads (see below) are "wrong" in newsgroups... 
Clients aren't really designed for that; for example, Thunderbird 
doesn't let you collapse individual posts; only the first level of 
nesting (threads) can be collapsed. Again, not technical reasons (the 
protocol isn't really "limited" in terms of posts-per-thread at all); 
it's just annoying to browse a 10000-post thread with news readers.

By the way, the forum->nntp linking I'm doing involves writing the NNTP 
server itself, since I didn't find any code flexible enough to let me 
stick any backend. POV-Ray uses DNEWS, but it's commercial software. I 
found one that seemed to have the same goals as me (interface with 
forums) but it's written in Python, and I don't know a single thing 
about it.

-- insanely long threads --

* Ctrl-Alt-Del forum, "Official I need Help finding a CAD Comic Thread", 
712 posts. In a sane NNTP server, it would be done by setting a whole 
group for those kind of requests, and each comic request would go on its 
own thread, with one or two or five replies, but not much more.
http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=47935

* RCN BOINC project forum, Cafe category, "Last one to post here wins", 
15135 posts at the time of this writing. Thread grows just for the hell 
of it. I think no BOINC project lacks such a thread, with usually all 
the same people :)
http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/forum_thread.php?id=12

I was told SETI@Home once had one of those "last to post wins" threads 
reach *two hundred thousand posts*. An admin deleted it because it was 
loading the database more than *anything* else (the forum software has 
no paging; you can only get either the last X posts or the whole thread).

* And an even worse thread, again in Ctrl-Alt-Del forum. "The Official 
Chat Thread". It's exactly what it sounds like: abusing a forum for 
chat-like conversation. 76391 posts at the moment.
http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=74371

Imagine those three in NNTP.

PS: Going off-topic is something completely normal of any 
forum/newsgroup/mailing list/chatroom. Wasn't this thread about a render 
engine? :)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:38:33 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> It's more about how people use it than technical issues. If the web
> interface has such a thing as "reply to this *thread*", people will
> click on it; and where in the tree would that post go?

Yes, but I am talking about a specific program that front-ends an NNTP 
interface using an NNTP gateway.

> Also, really long threads (see below) are "wrong" in newsgroups...
> Clients aren't really designed for that; for example, Thunderbird
> doesn't let you collapse individual posts; only the first level of
> nesting (threads) can be collapsed. Again, not technical reasons (the
> protocol isn't really "limited" in terms of posts-per-thread at all);
> it's just annoying to browse a 10000-post thread with news readers.

Yes, but it does happen.  c.f. NNTP server forums.novell.com, group 
novell.community.chat.  This is the testing group used at Novell, and it 
holds a lot of random chat (with thread drift and so on).  There are 
*NNTP* threads there that run for several thousand messages (there are 
stats as well on this, as one of the moderators of those groups wrote a 
program to parse the data stored in the newsreader he uses - Virtual 
Access, I think it's called).

> By the way, the forum->nntp linking I'm doing involves writing the NNTP
> server itself, since I didn't find any code flexible enough to let me
> stick any backend. POV-Ray uses DNEWS, but it's commercial software. I
> found one that seemed to have the same goals as me (interface with
> forums) but it's written in Python, and I don't know a single thing
> about it.

Well, there again, the NNTP gateway on vBulletin is a generic RFC-
compliant NNTP client.  As such, it doesn't care what's on the backend 
(Novell use Twister with Cyclone, which are commercial, but they can just 
as easily be INN or DNEWS).

> -- insanely long threads --
> 
> * Ctrl-Alt-Del forum, "Official I need Help finding a CAD Comic Thread",
> 712 posts. 

Tiny.  Very tiny compared to the long threads in n.c.c.  There was one 
guy who wrote a program to just generate replies for the hell of it - and 
it ended up being used to test the web-based interface in use at the 
time.  And it broke it (the front-end provided by the company that does 
Twister, in fact).

> In a sane NNTP server, it would be done by setting a whole
> group for those kind of requests, and each comic request would go on its
> own thread, with one or two or five replies, but not much more.
> http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=47935

Maybe in your world, but Novell don't create a newsgroup per topic posted 
in NCC - that would be nuts.  There's over 650,000 messages in that group 
*alone*, and at one time, it was pegged as the busiest newsgroup on the 
'net, with several thousand messages being posted each day.

> * RCN BOINC project forum, Cafe category, "Last one to post here wins",
> 15135 posts at the time of this writing. Thread grows just for the hell
> of it. I think no BOINC project lacks such a thread, with usually all
> the same people :)
> http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/forum_thread.php?id=12
> 
> I was told SETI@Home once had one of those "last to post wins" threads
> reach *two hundred thousand posts*. An admin deleted it because it was
> loading the database more than *anything* else (the forum software has
> no paging; you can only get either the last X posts or the whole
> thread).
> 
> * And an even worse thread, again in Ctrl-Alt-Del forum. "The Official
> Chat Thread". It's exactly what it sounds like: abusing a forum for
> chat-like conversation. 76391 posts at the moment.
> http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=74371
> 
> Imagine those three in NNTP.

Simple, the xover file could get quite large, but most NNTP servers can 
handle it with enough disk space (spool tends to be the biggest issue).  
I wouldn't do it with leafnode.  :-)

I mean really, NNTP message linking is essentially a linked list, linked 
by reference field.  IIRC, the NNTP RFCs specify the first message in the 
thread and the last 1 or 2 replies prior to the post itself, but many 
newsreaders don't do that or tack on as many references as they can.  
Some newsreaders stupidly thread by subject as well (fortunately most can 
have this disabled).

> PS: Going off-topic is something completely normal of any
> forum/newsgroup/mailing list/chatroom. Wasn't this thread about a render
> engine? :)

Yep, it was.

I've got many years working with the forums at Novell and most of the 
iterations of software they've been through - Hypernews, Proxicomm, 
Twister/Cyclone, Twister/Typhoon, and a few tests of some customized 
software (KNova, for example, which ended up not being implemented).

And personally, I *hate* web-based forums, but I understand that 
sometimes you can only use what's available through your firewall, and 
usually that means "web".  

The worst are the "flat forums" which are basically message lists (like 
buffistas.org, which my wife has participated in in the past - I found 
that incredibly difficult to read or follow).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson escribió:
> Maybe in your world, but Novell don't create a newsgroup per topic posted 
> in NCC - that would be nuts.  There's over 650,000 messages in that group 
> *alone*, and at one time, it was pegged as the busiest newsgroup on the 
> 'net, with several thousand messages being posted each day.

Waitwaitwaitwait I *just* noticed I misread that, not noticing you had 
misread my post. Of course it wouldn't be a *newsgroup* per topic. I 
meant a *thread* per topic. Making a "tech support thread" with 
thousands of posts is what web forums do, and wouldn't work on 
newsgroups. Making a "tech support group/forum category" with one thread 
per question is what people should do; and how it works on newsgroups.

When somebody gets a rendering artifact in POV-Ray, he posts a new 
thread on povray.general, like for any other problem. Some web forums 
would have a sticky thread called "Rendering artifacts help" with 
thousands of posts, and asking everybody with an artifact-related 
problem to post there. I think that is a stupid idea.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:14:39 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Waitwaitwaitwait I *just* noticed I misread that, not noticing you had
> misread my post. Of course it wouldn't be a *newsgroup* per topic. I
> meant a *thread* per topic. Making a "tech support thread" with
> thousands of posts is what web forums do, and wouldn't work on
> newsgroups. Making a "tech support group/forum category" with one thread
> per question is what people should do; and how it works on newsgroups.

Ah, yes, well, as you said, thread drift is always going to happen, too.  
But many "web forums" interchange "discussion group" with "thread".  
vBulletin doesn't do that - it has an NNTP gateway that maps a newsgroup 
to a forum.

> When somebody gets a rendering artifact in POV-Ray, he posts a new
> thread on povray.general, like for any other problem. Some web forums
> would have a sticky thread called "Rendering artifacts help" with
> thousands of posts, and asking everybody with an artifact-related
> problem to post there. I think that is a stupid idea.

I agree that it's a stupid idea. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message