hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes) said:

One of the goals of this arrangement I've proposed is that it can be used to rate _any_ existing mailing list.

This kind of thing was discussed quite exhaustively in news.future last year, and one of the spinoffs was an actual software implementation which is currently available via ftp. I haven't kept up on it so I don't know whether it can be used for mailing lists at the moment, or just for "virtual" newsgroups, but in any case I include three items of info below. The first is a finger message from last summer that gives an overview, the second is an equally old alpha-test message from the primary author that gives more info, and the third is a recent ftp site announcement from him. Between the three you should get some notion of what strn is all about and whether it's worthwhile following up on. If it does not currently support email lists, perhaps the authors could be persuaded to add such support. There's also a mention of public key cryptography below which is somewhat interesting. Since his address changed over the last 6 months, I took the liberty of changing references from his old to his new address in the older two items, to avoid confusion. Doug -- Doug Merritt doug@netcom.com Professional Wild-eyed Visionary Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow Unicode Novis Cypherpunks Gutenberg Wavelets Conlang Logli Alife HC_III Computational linguistics Fundamental physics Cogsci SF GA VR CASE TLAs ---------------------------- item one ------------------------ Login name: caadams In real life: Clifford A Adams Directory: /nfs/pavo/u3/caadams Shell: /bin/csh Last login Mon Jul 5 16:59 on ttyp2 from b153_csasm_03.un Plan: STRN/USENET Interface Project. The strn (Scan/Scoring Threaded ReadNews) program will be the first software release of the USENET Interface Project. Strn consists of two major (and some minor) additions to the trn program (version 3.0) by Wayne Davison/Stan Barber/Larry Wall. The additions are over 10000 lines of C code which implement newsgroup selection menus by user-defined "topics", an interactive article selection mode, and fast methods of scoring articles with prioritized display and commands similar to KILLfiles. An interactive multi-level documentation browser is also being developed. USENET Interface Project: ------------------------- The purpose of the USENET Interface Project is to identify and implement methods of dealing with "human bandwidth" problems of USENET. Its goal is to allow users to be presented with the articles they wish to read in the order they wish to read them, without restricting the posters of articles. There are currently three stages planned: 1. Filtering/Prioritizing Given the articles which currently exist, delete the articles which the user is unlikely to read and present the remaining articles in the order of their priority (score). This builds on and enhances the currently existing mechanisms such as separate hierarchical newsgroups and KILLfiles. 2. Suggestion/Addition Adds more information to make the filtering/prioritizing process more accurate (accuracy is measured by how well the presented order matches the user's wishes). Rating services may replace moderated newsgroups, where individuals decide which rating services to follow and what level of quality is acceptable. Summarizing and keywording services can also be made available to allow better selection and prioritizing. This stage will introduce problems in distributing the additional information and security (especially since the reputation of moderators may become much more important). 3. Alteration/Change The basic idea of this stage is that what the contents of the original posting are only a suggestion of what the reader will eventually view. While the original text would be propagated unaltered, various people would propagate their suggested editorial changes (such as hypertext links, spelling or factual corrections, moderator's notes, or summaries). What a reader finally views would be the combination of the original text with the changes of trusted editors. Another possibility at this stage would be the "virtual newsgroup" which is simply a collection of articles chosen by moderator(s). Send me email for more information on any of these projects. --Cliff -- Clifford A. Adams ----------------------- | USENET Interface Project: 457 Ash St. NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 | Tools for advanced newsreading STRN (Scan TRN) now in testing: trn 3.0 plus flexible newsgroup menus, fast article scoring with score ordered display, and merged/virtual newsgroups. ---------------------------- item two ------------------------

From netcomsv!decwrl!concert!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!umn.edu!lynx.unm.edu!carina.unm.edu!caadams Mon Jul 5 17:18:39 PDT 1993 From: caadams@access.digex.net (Clifford A Adams) Newsgroups: news.future Subject: Virtual newsgroups, ratings, indexes--coming soon? Date: 23 Jun 1993 03:35:57 GMT Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Message-ID: <208j2tINN342@lynx.unm.edu>

The recent discussions on news.future have been very interesting. I'd just like to add that I'm working on several ideas similar to some recent posts, and I hope to have some useful results in the near future. For instance, strn is very close to supporting "virtual newsgroups" consisting of arbitrary articles from arbitrary newsgroups. These could be things like "top 20 thread" lists, indexes similar to alt.sources.index, or moderated subsets of existing groups. In the next release strn (Scan TRN) will have merged newsgroups consisting of all the articles from a set of newsgroups presented together. (The code works well, but it needs documenting before release.) Virtual newsgroups are a fairly easy addition to this which I hope to add next week. Distributing virtual newsgroup lists is going to be the hard part. For now I'm looking at a mailing-list approach. (Ick--I hate mail filters.) (Distributing the information using an alt.group with public key authentication would be easy. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem possible in the current political environment. Anyone who knows differently is *welcomed* to correct me. Even weak authentication would be welcome if unpatented and exportable.) In short, some of these schemes might be implemented a few months from now. I hope to release strn 0.9.0 (beta) in a "few" weeks--right now the alpha testing list is semi-closed. (You *might* be able to convince me if you try really hard.) I'd like to talk to people about new ideas, but I believe that the implementations are more important--USENET isn't about to run out of new ideas anytime soon. ;) --Cliff P.S. For more information on strn and the USENET Interface Project, finger my account: caadams@access.digex.net. I'll email more information on request. -- Clifford A. Adams caadams@access.digex.net | USENET Interface Project: 457 Ash St. NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 | Tools for advanced newsreading Scan/Scoring trn (strn) now in alpha testing: a trn 3.0-based reader with flexible newsgroup menus and fast article scoring with prioritized display. ---------------------------- item three ------------------------

From netcomsv!amd!decwrl!decwrl!nic.hookup.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!digex.net!digex.net!not-for-mail Thu Feb 24 09:39:16 PST 1994 From: caadams@access.digex.net (Clifford A. Adams) Newsgroups: news.software.readers,news.future Subject: Strn version 0.9.2 is now available. Date: 21 Jan 1994 15:45:57 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA Keywords: strn, newsreader, filtering, prioritizing

[I thought some of the news.future crowd might be interested in some of the new developments, especially Internet-sharable virtual newsgroups.] Strn (Scan TRN) version 0.9.2 is now available. See below for FTP sites. [Some of the uunet mirrors might take a day or two to get a copy.] Strn is based on trn (version 3.4.1 by Wayne Davison), and contains all of the trn commands and features. It adds many new capabilities to trn, such as a newsgroup browser, virtual newsgroups, scoring/rating of articles, and easy configuration menus. Strn has been developed and tested over the past year with the help of more than 50 alpha testers. The beta release is intended to make the current version more widely available, test out some of the new concepts (such as index-moderation using virtual newsgroups), and gather suggestions for improvement. Strn is still under development, although most of its planned features are implemented. Future versions of strn will mainly improve the documentation, scoring ease-of-use, and configurability of the program. Version 1.0 release is expected in a finite amount of time. Outline of major strn features: * The "scan mode" interface o A consistent full-screen interface for the four scan modes. . Implements many common commands such as movement, shell escapes, and searching. . Common code allows quick development of new scan modes. o Uses arrow keys for movement (trn-style 'n' and 'p' are also allowed). o X windows mouse selection (when strn is run under "xterm"). * Group scan mode o Full-screen interface for newsgroup selection. o Can replace the trn newsgroup selector for most purposes. o Easy subscription/unsubscription to newsgroups. o User-definable and sharable topic hierarchies. . Example: one could have an "IBM PC" topic containing the groups in comp.sys.ibm.pc.*, comp.os.msdos.*, comp.os.os2, and comp.os.ms-windows.* o Topic hierarchies can be easily shared: . Locally, by adding a link to another user's topics. . Remotely, by sending the topic files to other users. . Via Internet using Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). * Virtual scan mode o Supports "virtual groups" consisting of articles from any newsgroup. o Supports an easy-to-use "hotlist" of selected articles. o Merged groups, such as rec.arts.sf.* (all articles in those groups) o Virtual group files can be mailed to other users, and (with some setup) automatically added to a user's virtual group files. o Posted virtual group files can be used directly, allowing easy "index-moderated" newsgroups. o Virtual newsgroups can be shared via Internet and URLs. * Article scan mode o Subject-based "threading" available. . All articles with the same subject can be displayed as one line. o Summaries and keywords can be displayed. o Articles can be marked and read as a group. o Displays articles in either arrival or score order. (See below for more information on scoring.) * Scoring o Articles are assigned a score by scoring rules consisting of: . Header matching: either exact text or regular expressions. . (optional) NewsClip programs. o Scoring allows high scoring (interesting) articles to be presented before non-scored (ordinary) or negative-scoring (uninteresting) ones. For instance, in sci.space, one could give higher scores to postings from NASA or JPL, and easily read only those articles. o Articles are graded on a continuous scale, rather than a binary keep/junk distinction. (Articles scoring below a threshold value can be junked automatically.) o Scoring is *fast*, typically limited by I/O times to fetch article headers. o Scoring rules can be entered with an easy-to-use menu. o Scoring can be done from a shell script run by cron/at. o Scores are saved to a file so they don't need to be recalculated. * Online help (help scan mode) o Typing 'H' at almost any prompt enters help scan mode. o Help scan mode presents menus of documentation, containing: . The complete trn manual, broken into sections. . Full strn documentation. . Introductory USENET documents (such as "What is USENET?"). o Help files can be easily edited by the local administrator. * Online configuration o Easy menu-based configuration of almost all strn options. o Accessible from the newsgroup selector or group scan mode. o Configuration changes are automatically saved for the next strn run. o Site-wide configuration Strn version 0.9.2 is available from the following FTP sites: (North America, Eastern US) ftp.uu.net /news/trn/strn ftp.digex.net /pub/news (North America, Southwest US) perseus.unm.edu /pub/strn (United Kingdom) src.doc.ic.ac.uk:computing/news/software/readers/trn/strn (Europe, Netherlands) ftp.twi.tudelft.nl /pub/news (South Africa) ftp.ee.und.ac.za /pub/news/strn Sample displays [edited to reduce number of lines]: Article scan mode: [authors not shown in this sample to protect the guilty :-]: ---------- cut ---------- sci.physics | 790 unread Fold +.... [ 18] ( 9) > Some physics questions +....> [ 14] ( 10) > The size of electrons, and Fanciful misc SAGA +.... [ 11] ( 4) > Massive Photons Tomorrow (was Scientists Plan...) +.... [ 8] ( 47) > NASA Coverup Keys: Moon Neutral Point calculation +...x [ 7] ( 8) > Gravitation & massless particles (was Re: Some physics qu +..+. [ 3] ( 5) > Question on Hawking radiation Summary: Why don't extremal black holes radiate? +.... [ 3] ( 10) > Background Radiation and Olber's Paradox +.... [ 1] ( 1) Covariant vs. Lie Derivative in Gen. Rel.? -TOP-(score (old>new) order, 100% scored) ---------- cut ---------- Group scan mode: [Here is the "top" level:] ---------- cut ---------- Top Level | Unread Newsgroups | Top Level file> Favorites virt Hotlist file Americast (USA Today) file USENET file Networks file Computers file Amiga! file Social file Games file Recreational file Science file Misc file Hierarchies list All groups in .newsrc -ALL- ---------- cut ---------- [After selecting the "USENET" entry the screen displays:] ---------- cut ---------- Level 2 | Unread Newsgroups | USENET +.... 31> news.software.readers +M... 4 news.announce.newgroups +.... 7 news.misc +.... 33 news.software.nn +.... 27 news.future +.... 139 alt.config +.... 201 alt.fan.warlord +.... 2259 control list foreign news -ALL- ---------- cut ---------- Virtual scan mode: ---------- cut ---------- Virtual 1 | unread+read | Hotlist -.... [ 33] >Newsreader authors: Would article replacement break your reader < -.... [ 18] FAQ use of replaces: <news.software.readers> -.... [ 6] >Using NNRP for something like "nngrab" <news.software.readers> -.... [ 6] rn KILL file FAQ <news.software.readers> -.... [ -1] Future USENET projections, statistical <news.future> -.... [ -1] Need more best-of-usenet groups/subj scan <news.misc> -.... [ -1] More group-related intelligence for Pnews wanted. <news.software.r -ALL-(score order) ---------- cut ---------- Help scan mode: ---------- cut ---------- Top Level | (type 'h' for help) help> Help on help scan mode topic Introductory USENET documents topic Trn manual information help Strn Quickstart topic Introductory strn documentation topic Group scan mode topic Article scan mode topic Virtual scan mode (merged/virtual newsgroups) topic Scoring topic Digital signatures, cryptography, and USENET topic Misc (coding style, troubleshooting, quotes) topic Configuration (user and site-wide) topic Installation topic Version-related information help Credits -ALL- ---------- cut ---------- Configuration menus: ---------- cut ---------- Strn configuration menu: 0) Exit. 1) Group scan mode. 2) Article scan mode. 3) Virtual scan mode. 4) Scoring. 5) Miscellaneous. Enter your choice: 2 Article scan configuration menu: 0) Exit. 1) Change the displayed fields. (Author, threadcount, summary, etc...) 2) Change ordering and misc. flags. (score ordering, fold, follow, etc...) Enter your choice: 1 Article scan display: 0) Exit. 1) Article number (OFF) 2) Score (ON) 3) Number of articles with same subject (ON) 4) Author (ON) 5) Summary (OFF) 6) Keywords (OFF) An article will look like this: +.... [ 26] (17) John Q. Public Subject of the article Enter your choice: ---------- cut ---------- Authors: (See the strn credits for more information) STRN Clifford A. Adams <caadams@access.digex.net> TRN Wayne Davison <davison@borland.com> RN Stan Barber (current maintainer) RN Larry Wall (original author of rn) --Cliff -- Clifford A. Adams caadams@access.digex.net | Author of "strn" (scan trn): 457 Ash St. NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 | Trn 3.4.1 + virtual newsgroups, scoring (articles sorted by score), newsgroup menus, online help, and more. See ftp.uu.net:/news/trn/strn/strn-0.9.2.tar.gz