Re: News...

>        I think we should agree on what "quality" is first.

The points about measurement are important, but if we have to agree first
we'll never do anything.  There are logistical problems in measuring
quality, even if we agreed about what it is, because a lot of the
information is what people actually do with a few links rather than how
many there are, and that information resides on the server.  And if someone
loads a page locally and uses it every hour, even the publisher/server
won't know.

But some basic statistics about pages are inevitable, and I believe they're
valuable in themselves.  They can be done by anyone who can read our pages,
and so I believe we should approach the project the same as other efforts
on the Web--create some examples, and then critique those examples calmly
and in good faith, and create counter-examples and variations. This is
hard, but will substantially demonstrate points that otherwise would just
be arguments.

Again, I think the points raised are pretty good and thoughtful so far, but
I don't support the idea of postponing basic measurements and statistics
for the V Lib pages.  It will take a long time to get the basics as it is,
and in the meantime we can continue our discussions, and congratulate
anyone who can actually poll all of the pages on the V Lib, find all of the
local sub-pages, figure out which ones are related, and get the first
counts of words, files, links, graphics, speed, and file sizes.

-- Brad Schrick (started current versions of the Aviation, Aeronautics, and
Aerospace Engineering pages)

 __________________________________________________________________________
 Brad Schrick    brad@ape.com  *** Palo Alto, California
               http://ape.com/ ....Don't tell me it's easy until it's done.
 __________________________________________________________________________

Received on Sunday, 2 October 1994 17:49:47 UTC