Page "Rn (newsreader)" Paragraph 5

As news volumes continued to increase, it became apparent that even KILL files could not possibly keep up with the sheer number of users and articles.

A new concept, the threaded newsreader, was needed as users gradually switched from a " read most, kill few " model to " ignore most, read few ".

By organizing the articles in a newsgroup according to threads of discussion, using headers that had long been present in Usenet articles but practically unused, a threaded newsreader would allow users to keep up with topics and discussions they were interested without having to explicitly deselect uninteresting threads.

Kim F. Storm's nn newsreader was the first to implement this new model, and it looked for a while as if nn would do to rn what rn did to readnews.

This fate was averted when Wayne Davison developed trn, a set of patches to rn which gave it both threading at the article level and a new user interface that would allow users to select only the threads they desired, while remaining true to the original rn interface philosophy of do the right thing.