Chuq Von Rospach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On 2/9/01 9:36 PM, "Russ Allbery" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I think that people who argue a difference between web boards and NNTP
>> are missing something really significant. Why pick one or the other?
>> A Usenet news server makes a really nice backend database behind a web
>> board, NNTP is a dead-simple protocol to put into a PHP script or the
>> like, and then the people who really like news can just bypass the web
>> front end and read directly from the underlying server.
> Very good point. Do-able, although I'm not sure I'd put in the work, not
> if there are reasonable web-only solutions instead. But it's a very
> interesting architecture.
Most of the web-only solutions attempt to reinvent solved problems badly
(such as threading). NNTP has had over a decade to get some of this stuff
right and has learned at least a little from its mistakes. Compare how
easy it is to follow a thread in a high-traffic Usenet newsgroup to how
hard it is to read a thread in thread order on Slashdot. Not to mention
that all of the filtering stuff that Slashdot tries to give you is still
mostly inferior (except for the moderation level stuff, which is rather
interesting and should be doable in NNTP with some custom headers in the
overview) to the scoring capabilities that started showing up on a
widespread basis in Usenet newsreaders about five years ago.
Another nice thing about NNTP is that when you want to scale your
discussion boards, synchronizing redundant back-end databases is a
completely solved problem -- just use regular news feeds.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
