New UK DIY Forums

[PoP]

FYI.

I have made available an online forum web site which might be of interest to UK DIYers. You can find this web site at:

feel free to use and/or contribute as you see fit. I have no commercial intentions with the web site except as might be incidental (e.g. I will advertise the services I offer the same as everyone else can) and any email addresses used to sign up will neither be publicised nor used other than for the express purposes of the forums.

If I gain anything from managing and hosting this web site then I intend it will be through open referral from the web site rather than any hard-nosed marketing arrangement.

My hope is that this resource might provide a resource with information useful to UK DIYers. If it doesn't then fine, but I've made it available in case it might be useful.

Just as an aside, I looked at obtaining the

domain and it's one of those that appears to have been registered by a domain squatter - they want £3,600 to transfer it to a new owner! In case anyone else is interested in obtaining that domain I can confirm that you won't be in competition with me. I hate domain squatters with a vengeance.

PoP

[Mike]

Can't get past the Privacy Statement "Agree" button

[Grunff]

The fact that you have it configured to *require* user registration merely to read the forums is really, really bad. It's bad for several reasons. It's bad because you shouldn't force people to register just too view info. It's bad because people are lazy and don't want to register, and it's particularly bad because none of the content will be spiderable.

Second point, which is more of a personal opinion, is why? What does a web based BB provide that Usenet doesn't?

[Lurch]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 21:08:16 +0100, in uk.d-i-y Grunff strung together this:

Seconded, or whatever it may be by the time this reply is uploaded!

Pretty pictures and bandwidth hogging crap.

[Michael Mcneil]

What's wrong with him giving the bandwidth? So why would someone squat on the dot co or com and not the dot org?

And what's in a name anyway? I thought that that silliness was burned out by now.

It might be handy if he had enough good managers to sort out the crap that gets onto usenet sometimes. School hollidays especially. Mind you it's only annoying when the moron has a mass of names to reply to himself with. And it rarely lasts a week while someone reports the little scamp and they depeer his mummy or daddy.

[Lurch]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 21:47:13 +0000 (UTC), in uk.d-i-y "Michael Mcneil" strung together this:

I wasn't on about his bandwidth, I was on about mine. And another thing, a web based forum is a pain in the arse as you have to navigate everywhere with a mouse, whereas using an offline newsreader reading threads without a mouse is vastly improved. And something else, if you only read one forum then you could get away with using a web based forum, but as I currently subscribe to ten groups trawling the internet repeatedly hunting for new posts would be a complete PITA. It'd be like painting that big bridge, by the time you've read them all it'd be time to start again.

What?

That would be one advantage, but it's manageable in a *proper newsreader. (Not OE particularly).

[BillV]

[geoff]

In message , PoP writes

I can't get past the rules and regs page If I press "agree", it doesn't go anywhere

If It becomes popular, I can put a forward on uk-diy.org as an alternative to the uk diy faq's (if someone writes the code for me)

[John Rumm]

The main benefit that I can see with a site like this, is freedom from the trolls (and I was not even referring to our pet one either!). Also perhaps the ability to associate pictures with words more easily for those questions where it would help. There are a few downsides however as others have suggested.

One idea that was floating through my mind, what that of a UK.D-I-Y NNTP proxy (either running as app one can download and run, or, on the net as an alternative NNTP host).

The plan would go like this:

You would still use your normal newsreader software, and still post to usenet through your normal means. However you could configure your software to download/read uk.d-i-y via the NNTP filter rather than your ISPs news server. You would see exactly the same posts and threads - but without the trolls.

Anyone see mileage in this approach? Any comments?

[Dave Stanton]

Why, give them time !!. Usenet works, has since the dawn of Darpa net. Lots of forum software is so sloooooow.

Dave

Dave

[Mike Mitchell]

Why do I need to register? Everyone wants to know my details nowadays! My choice is...

No, thanks!

MM

[PoP]

this arrangement based upon feedback received.

Just one query that I would like to answer immediately from the responses which have already been made.....

Usenet is great for ongoing discussion. But it isn't so great when people keep asking the same old tired questions. Much better IMHO to point them to a previous answer and move on.

You can of course use google to search for previous answers on usenet. But few people do that before posting their question - and I honestly don't know how to do that search without someone reminding me. There are two main types of people in this usenet forum - the "regulars" that we all know who crop up time and again, and the one-offs who pop in to ask a question and then disappear off the radar screen. It's those one-offs which present the same old questions time after time.

Things like Ed Sirretts web pages about gas fitting etc are great resources. But I can never remember the URLs.....

There's also the situation whereby people can't access usenet from their work PC, but might often have access to the Internet via a browser. So they can access online forums no problem. How many DIYers are there out there who use their lunchbreaks to organise things they are going to do at home at the weekend?

If you don't like this arrangement that's absolutely fine, I'm not trying to force this onto anyone and it isn't going to replace usenet forums, ever. I happen to have a reseller account with an ISP so it's costing me diddly squat to run the forums. I'm not trying to compete with anybody or anything, I simply thought it might be an occasionally useful resource containing information which might otherwise be difficult to keep track of.

PoP

[Stuart]

If you have no marketing or commercial intentions then why do you want others to register with so many personal details.

No Thanks

[N. Thornton]

Whos going to do the work? Are you willing to pay them? Those seem the key qs to me. Care around the censoring policy comes after that.

Regards, NT

[Owain]

"PoP" wrote | Things like Ed Sirretts web pages about gas fitting etc are great | resources. But I can never remember the URLs.....

Bookmark them, then you have the URLs to hand offline :-)

| There's also the situation whereby people can't access usenet from | their work PC, but might often have access to the Internet via a | browser. So they can access online forums no problem. How many DIYers | are there out there who use their lunchbreaks to organise things they | are going to do at home at the weekend?

Googlegroups already provides that, there are other news-web gateways out there too I think. You could always run a web gateway to the newsgroup but if you do please make it clear that its users are participating in a Usenet forum and be prepared to take responsibility for posts originating on it. (rec.travel.europe is mirrored on one of the British Ex-Pats fora for example). This actually can be beneficial in that if the web fora is spiderable, ukdiy would appear more highly in general web searches rather than just searches of Usenet.

One of the problems with web fora is that they are subject to the operator or hoster's continued co-operation and aren't usually properly archived anywhere. (They're impossible to save for offline reading anyway.) Even if Googlegroups died tomorrow, I guess several people here will have complete archives of the group and many more like myself will have archives of all their own postings for the last couple of years.

The problems with trolling could be eradicated by using a moderated group with a robomoderator such as STUMP removing binaries and crossposts - although that effect can usually be achieved by the user's newsreader fairly well anyway.

Owain

[PoP]

Great minds etc :)

I was thinking about this this afternoon. I have the capability of running an NNTP newsgroup from here on my server. With relatively few users (say less than 100 but that's not a limitation in itself) my broadband uplink could handle the traffic because they wouldn't all be pulling/pushing at the same time. And it could be user/password protected with ease thus whilst not keeping the trolls out completely would at least dull their performance somewhat.

However, I don't really see the point of introducing something like this because the whole nature of usenet is such that it is supposed to be for "anonymous" access without restriction (those are my words before someone leaps up and down on my head!). And the problem would be trying to encourage users whilst barring them at the same time. I can't see how that would work.

I added RSS newsfeed capability to the web site forums this afternoon, plus made some other mods which now don't require you to log on to read messages. Logging on to write messages is still required, and I would hope that would keep the trolls under their bridge as a first line of defence.

PoP

[PoP]

Hell, I just ticked the boxes during configuration (or left them ticked, whatever). And there's no check on whether data is entered in those fields. As far as registration goes there would be nothing stopping someone from registering as Mickey Mouse with a [e-mail] email address.

No need to be paranoid.

PoP

[mike ring]

PoP wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I don't agree; I admit it gets tedious to have the same old questions coming up, but they so frequently spark off discussions that are interesting and entertaining, as well as possibly enlightening.

I think the recently informed like to answer questions, both out of a sense of gratitude and to show off (or is that just me?), so the old hands don't really have to keep scratching out the same stuff, although often (thanks Ed Sirett and Set Square, to name a couple) they really nail a problem's hide to the wall.

I appreciate your intention, and for some groups that are _really_ badly troll-infested it seems a good idea.

But I don't think individuals can do it; if it's not moderated there's no troll defence, if it is moderated who's going to do the job?

mike r

[BillV]

Poor old Mickey he's going to get even more spam now :-)

[John Rumm]

Well I was thinking of me...

But easy enough to deal with...

That is the one that would take more thought... having said that, even if one gets it wrong you can always look at your normal NNTP feed to see any missing articles.