NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/can/domain/18

Text File | 1993-01-02 | 3.4 KB | 84 lines

Newsgroups: can.domain
Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!cs.ubc.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!alberta!cdshaw
From: [e-mail] (Chris Shaw)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News Administrator)
Nntp-Posting-Host: menaik.cs.ualberta.ca
Organization: University of Alberta
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 23:44:28 GMT
Lines: 71

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>>It's a *lot* easier to remember that "The company is TDK Consulting
>>Services, he's in the Region/City of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada"
>>and associate that with [e-mail] than to associate
>>it with "[e-mail]"
>
>Well actually I would suggest that [e-mail] is sufficent. And is
>
>    [e-mail]
>    [e-mail]
>
>eight characters less to remember or type.

The issue here is not number of characters, but cognitive load. The first
three digits of the postal code are three random characters for which the
user must learn a place-name association. Both the characters themselves
and their association with the appropriate place name is demonstrably
more difficult to learn than an abbreviated place name.

Thousands of studies of human memory performance bear this out. Postal
codes (and other seemingly random strings of letters and digits) are harder
to remember than place names.

>Phone the post office. Look at your correspondents business card. Give them
>a phone call.

Oh, I see. To EMail something, I have to telephone the post office or my
corresponent. Why don't I just ditch EMail altogether & use the phone?

>For example how do you specifiy Portage la Prairie?

portage-la-prairie

Was that so hard? Oh I know, it was hard to type. Also a little hard to
spell. So to save a few characters at the keyboard, I should telephone my
post office to find an unambiguous postal code, so that I can save 15 or
so characters.

Look. When I started using EMail in 1982, there weren't a lot of sites, and
long site names seemed dumb. Now that there are one hundred thousand or
so distinct domains (or whatever it is), it's foolish to demand 6 letter site
names at the expense of everything else. EMail is no longer the cozy village
it once was, but is instead a multi-lingual international metropolis of
more than one million inhabitants.

>I am also of the opinion that it will be impossible to satisfy everyone
>with *one* way of doing things.

False, in this instance. Canada Post mandates one correct addressing method,
and it works. The same can be true in this instance, although I don't think
that the number of domain names warrants a normative scheme just yet.
Maybe in the USA this is not the case.

>Is there any technical problem with
>supporting some small number of different ways to select a name. I.e. you
>get your choice of tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca OR tdkcs.n2j.ca OR some other
>scheme that doesn't clash and is desired by some large body of users.

The only problem is to make sure everyone implements it. I'd be willing to bet
that the place-name format (eg waterloo.on.ca) will be the method of choice
for 98% of users, however.

>For another example....
Ridiculous emotional appeal deleted.

>Stuart Lynne <[e-mail]>


--
Chris Shaw               University of Alberta
[e-mail]    CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !