Re: [Pan-users] Re: Scoring update

[Douglas Bollinger]

On 21 Feb 2003 10:12:35 -0800
address@hidden wrote:

> I find that sorting by score doesn't really work very well.  If you
> sort strictly by the numeric value, the thread ordering is more or
> less arbitrary.  What I found from using GNUS was that some sort of
> 'banding' was necessary, to quantize the articles by score ranges.
> You do something like this with the 'really high score' and 'really
> low score' stuff, but it's really broad.
> 
> When I use GNUS, and have the ability to write my own primary-key
> article sort functions in elisp, I find that a good 'banding' function
> is something like int(ln(SCORE)), or int(log(SCORE)).  This results
> in a good thread presentation, because threads with the same rough
> score are then sorted alphabetically.  Something to think about, in any
> case.

Hey, nice idea!

The biggest problem I had with Gravity and scoring was similar, although
Gravity's scoring + threading was even worse then what he describes in GNUS
because in Gravity if you used scoring you lost threading completely (if
you sorted by score).  From the screenshots, Pan won't have this problem,
but the above post is a really good idea.  When you get a bunch of scoring
rules, you tend to fragment the threading when you really only want to
break the threads down into a few groups.

Any plans on hooking color into scoring?  With scoring, I think the
ignored/watched threads feature is useless, so you could free-up those 
colors for scoring.  I found having the colors is nice for identifying
the threads that I am posting into. 

Oh well, maybe I should watch until this hits CVS before I go on a feature
request bender. :)  Can't wait!

-- 
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection
with income tax policies.
                -- William F. Buckley