Could De-Bundling Have A Positive Impact On UseNet?

[Tom Watson]

There seems to be a trend towards taking Usenet out of the features typically bundled with ISP services.

I have Comcast which farms their Usenet stuff out to GigaNews and that works fine except when Comcast has a problem. As many have noted, when you contact Comcast Tier 1 support for a Usenet problem they don't even know what newsgroups are.

It looks to be the case that binaries will go first but there may ultimately be a reduction or elimination of all Usenet service through ISP's.

I wonder if that is all bad.

Some guys I talk with think that the Golden Age of newsgroups ended when AOL started in. I don't know; I was on CompuServe then.

Some hardcore types even think that the best days were before Gene Spafford organized The Backbone Cabal that lead to The Great Renaming in '87.

I don't know about that and I'm not going to get medieval about it and start looking for my Hayes 1200 baud Smartmodem either.

The point is that the ease and transparency of access to newsgroups may have contributed to the influx of the ignorati.

The corollary might be that an increase in the difficulty of obtaining access, whether by necessitating a specialized provider, or by reintroducing certain technical challenges to gaining access, might reverse the trend and diminish the number of knuckleheads on Usenet.

Maybe it would be good to pay a few bucks a month to get newsgroups - and maybe they should make setup and configuration sufficiently challenging as to act as rough justice sort of bozo filter.

It's an interesting concept.

Regards, Tom.

Thos. J. Watson - Cabinetmaker

[B A R R Y]

Maybe...

Good thought.

[Lee Michaels]

That sound good in theory Tom. But one of the big problems with newsgroups is that an ancient group of dinosaurs determine if anybody gets to make a new one. We are basically stuck with what we got.

I worked with a number of individuals to create a new newsgroup once, It was a descent into hell. You have to "prove" the existence of a "need" of the new newsgroup. And a poll is taken of present newsgroups with all the spammers and bozos. They are living in another universe. And do not care about the present dysfunctionl state of things.

Until which newsgroups can be created and in some fashion filter out the bozos, there isn't much hope for a viable alternative to the present situation.

[Tom Watson]

I'd agree that the process is cumbersome but a smurf like Vito Kuhn went through it and created a newsgroup that nobody participates in.

I think that the point of some of the oldtimers is that newsgroups were better when you had to be technically competent to even get on them.

I've talked with guys who think that the whole game went to hell when we got away from BBS's.

I'm not saying that I agree but I understand their argument.

We often joke about the Cabal here on rec.norm but the real Cabal was the group of guys who created the architecture of Usenet in its transition to what we have now.

I'll bet most of the survivors don't even use it anymore.

Talk to a guy who remembers when The Well was a hot item.

I'll bet most of the original group stay in contact with each other via email.

Regards, Tom.

Thos. J. Watson - Cabinetmaker

[Maxwell Lol]

Get rid of the normal people, and keep the spammers?

[Mike Marlow]

Sorry Joe - my reply confused you because I just inserted comments and didn't position myself. My previous post was my only post to this thread, and I was just throwing my two cents into the mix - I'm not the originator of the comments you had earlier replied to.

[Joe AutoDrill]

No worries! Well, lots of worries at times actually but the only people who want to hear about them charge by the hour...

Regards, Joe Agro, Jr. [phone]

01.908.542.0244 Automatic / Pneumatic Drills: Spindle Drills: ** Posted from **

[mac davis]

I think that in the long run, it will improve the overall quality of UseNet..

If the only folks that used newsgroups were the ones that were willing to pay a few bucks a month to do it, could that clean up some of the "static"?

I know that when we moved to Mexico, we went from Comcast to a satellite service and had to find our own news server.. And in getting APN, in our case, we found out how UseNet SHOULD work, IMO..

I see the dedicated news server folks getting more clients/cash flow and hopefully continuing a high level of service.. If I need support or billing info, I'd rather deal with a company that provides my service, rather than someone who farms me out and hasn't got a clue what I need..

[Jay R]

It is not that easy.

It is a violation of the Verizon trems of use to gran alt.binaries any where else.

[J. Clarke]

Would you care to quote the exact provision of the TOS that precludes this?

[Puckdropper]

mac davis wrote in news: [e-mail]:

(I hope I trimmed properly, some of the non-quoted text seems awful familiar.)

The problem pay services have is getting people to actually do it. I could fill up quite a bit of my time with forums and newsgroups on the free Internet rather than pay money for a now not-free Usenet. Without Usenet being free*, is there enough interest in it to draw people to it?

Nowadays it's rare to see an Internet message pointing to a Usenet group. Back in the '90s, it wasn't so rare.

*free in this case refers to the need to spend no additional money for access.

Puckdropper

[Larry W]

Perhaps the major telcos should take action to limit the use of telephones for criminal purposes.

Oh wait, unlike eliminating usenet from their internet services, that would cost them money, not saev them money.

[Gordon Shumway]

Tom,

I don't always agree with you. Hell, I seldom do. But this time what you have said makes sense.

We'll have to sit back and see...