As the HP telecast on future directions of the 3000 celebrated the
25th anniversary of the platform, the "official" HP3000-L list
approaches its 10th anniversary.  Throughout the years of growing
pains, there has been a polarized view of the value of the list
ranging from "The most valuable resource for HP3000 information" to
"An overweight flood of noisy, largely off-topic mailbox fodder." The
truth has always somewhere between those two extremes (in my opinion)
but there seemed to be no easy compromise between the timely, casual
atmosphere of the list "as is" and a stuffy, formal, and reasoned
separation of the wheat from the chaff, without the delays associated
with printed publications.

At IPROF '96 I had an informal meeting with several key Interex staff
members where they essentially asked, "Is there anything we can do
to help?" The question was triggered by several statements during the
meetings about the high traffic and signal-to-noise ratio on the list
(from the perception of the commentators).  There was no quick and
economical solution, although several ideas were tossed around.

I made an initial experiment with a "moderated" HP3000 digest, produced
weekly, with common threads grouped together and superfluous headers
and signatures removed from the text to keep it brief.  It took
nearly a whole weekend to condense a week's digest, a task for which
I'm afraid I'm not willing to volunteer, on top of the existing list
housekeeping.

The next experiment was HP3000-M, which has proven to be viable for me
to do.  The HP3000-M list serves as an alternate delivery method for the
list digests and currently are sent out in ~2000 line increments as they
accumulate. Relevant postings are included verbatim, while the "noisier"
ones and off-topic subjects are excluded from the digest.  This is an
improvement, but not quite yet compact and concise enough for the busy
and/or bandwidth-limited professional (the target audience).  Those of
us in the trenches find the "timely" feedback of the highest importance,
but our occasional diversions have scared away some readers if not also
participants in the discussion.

Some months ago, Interex offered an editor very knowledgeable about the
3000 platform to further distill the collective discussion on the
HP3000-L list into a compact "summary" format. The editor, Bruce Toback,
is a systems consultant and software architect for OPT, Inc.  He
develops systems and software for HP 3000, UNIX, Macintosh, and Windows
platforms.  After some discussion regarding the delivery format and the
availability of the summaries, it was decided that The HP3000-L Summary
would be provided on the Interex Web site and be open to the public as
is the list/newsgroup itself. We have been through several weeks of
private "testing" to see how the final result would look, and I must say
that I am quite pleased with the initial results. For whatever my
opinion is worth, Interex and Bruce have my full blessings and
endorsement; the HP3000-L Summary is a very worthy and valuable resource
for those who are overwhelmed by the list.

I would encourage you to check the summaries for yourself, and, in
particular, if you are aware of any users of the "too much noise"
opinion, please refer them to the new summaries.  There will be a new
link from the Interex home page (http://www.interex.org) as well as a
new URL for the HP3000-L Summary on the Interex Web site
(http://www.interex.org/3000lsum/3000lsummary.html)

Enjoy the new features, and my thanks to Interex for their editorial
services, which have finally overcome the "signal/noise" blockade for
the busy professional.

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>