response 34 of 49:

Feb 15 04:06 UTC 2000

I don't know the answers to any of Mary's questions.

Let me describe what Backtalk does when new users join a conference.

By default, it does *exactly* what Picospan does.  The first and last
item are marked new.  All other items are marked "unseen" so that "read
new" will not display them on the user's first visit to the conference. 
If the user visits the conference a second time, all the "unseen" items
that have had activity since the last time he was there will be new.

Using Backtalk, the fairwitness can change this default behavior for his
or her conference.  They can do either or both of two different things:

  - Change the list of items that are new on the first visit.  Maybe
    for some reason item 5 contains information that you think all new
    users should see on their first visit.  You could add that item to
    the list of items that are "new" on newuser's first visit.  This
    can be very useful - if you have "rules" for the conference in a
    frozen item that is not item 1, then with Picospan many new users
    will never see that item, because with no responses showing up on
    it, it will never be new.  But although this is useful, it is not
    a general solution for the problem.

  - Make all items which have had activity in the last X days new.  So
    I might say that for the agora conference, the first item, the last
    item, and all items that have had activity in the last 24 hours
    should be new.  Thus, the user sees on his first visit exactly what
    Picospan would show him on his second visit, if his first visit had
    been 24 hours ago and if he hadn't actually read anything on his
    first visit.  I think this is better than the default behavior,
    because it makes things seem just a little more lively on his first
    visit, without drowning the newuser in a lot of dead old items.  For
    this to work well, the time period X has to be chosen appropriately
    for the conference - more active conferences should have a smaller
    X value than less active conferences.  (It might be nice to be able
    to say you want the 10 most recently active items to be new, but I
    haven't implemented that.)

Note that Backtalk's behavior is really a very small refinement on
Picospan's behavior.  The basic concept of "unseen" items that aren't
shown to new users until there is activity on them is an excellent one. 
I'd think making all items new for new users would be much more
obnoxious (though it is possible for a fairwitness to do that in
Backtalk, and it might even be useful to do so in a conference like
Auction which will never get very big).

response 36 of 49:

Feb 15 13:08 UTC 2000

I don't think there's quite that, but I'm sure it's feasible for
a program to be written, external to Picospan, that you could run
and that would have that effect; i.e. if the program were called
"mun" (for "Make Unseen New"), you could type

       mun agora

to have every unseen item in agora marked as new.  Or a more
elaborate program could be written that mimics Backtalk's more
complex behavior that Jan describes above.  If you invoke the
program *before* joining the conference, then it would have the
desired effect.  (Jan's hypothetical "awfulprogram" was essentially
that; the only "awful" part was the kludgy technique for
invoking it automatically on the user's behalf.)

response 38 of 49:

Feb 15 17:23 UTC 2000

Ah yes, that's definitely simpler.

Yes, there's a system-wide .cfrc equivalent, whose name I don't
remember offhand.

Regarding the issue that Eric raised in this item:  I definitely
prefer the current default to simply treating every unseen item
as "new".  But I think it should be easier for users to find out
about the "read unseen" command.  It's useful in the way Joe
just described -- to browse older items that haven't seen
activity for a while.

response 40 of 49:

Feb 15 21:01 UTC 2000

It might be useful if the Agora login screen displayed something
like this:

        Type:

          read          - to read material new since your last visit
          read unseen   - to read items you've never seen
          read since -3 - to read material posted in the last 3 days

(Actually, you'd want to display this to Picospan users only, not
Backtalk users.  Hm, how to do that...)

response 42 of 49:

Feb 16 13:27 UTC 2000

Yes, you're quite right.  Picospan and Backtalk login screens
can be different.

response 44 of 49:

Feb 28 07:00 UTC 2000

i'm curious about that, too.  it would be good to know.

response 46 of 49:

Mar 3 06:49 UTC 2000

 or, of all else fails, we can just make a note to bring it up u
nder new business.

response 48 of 49:

Mar 11 22:58 UTC 2000

Small lull in discussion. I haven't gotten to the subsequent items yet
(haven't read coop in a while), so this may be redundant. I think the the main
argument against this is impact on new users. So there shouldn't really be
anything wrong with setting it up as a personal option (except for technical
aspects). So we should do it.