Tarmacing a drive in Essex

[Bob Eager]

Ah yes, but you graduated before the birth of Usenet!

[Roger Chapman]

This ng is surviving but the two other user groups I subscribe to are close to being moribund. Classic cars has only had one short thread in over a month and Walking goes days without a single posting.

[John Williamson]

I must have a wider range of interests than you.

I subscribe to 14 groups, the diabetes ones are not dead, but steady, and every post in the UK based diabetics group is followed by one saying that the poster should join the forum that was started a while ago, but without answering the question. The professional audio groups are quite busy, though I might as well unsubscribe from the home audio groups. The Windows XP group is quiet, but useful. I stay away from the Linux groups after a couple of flame wars. The Land Rover group is sporadic.

Then there's Ye Shedde, Ye Pubbe...

Fashions change, and the younger ones can't be bothered setting up an account with a news erver and learning how to use a newsreader, so if they come to usenet, it's via Google, with its horrible interface, which drives them to Facebook and other forums, where they get the bling, and don't notice how little actual information's there.

[polygonum]

Six/seven years ago I found myself needing to know and care about thyroid disease for the first time in my life. And found alt.support.thyroid. A total godsend with some very knowledgeable and helpful posters and a steady stream of interesting posts.

Now it can go possibly weeks without a single post.

Two things seemed to directly reduce usage. Spam (and garbage) - the number and character of the spam. (Though I hardly see any of that - when forced to use Google I realised how much there is.) Nasty posts - there were several issues with some posters being very unpleasant to each other. Apparent usage seemed to drop by three quarters after one particularly unpleasant spat.

New users in particular were taking both spam and nasty posts as being directed at them individually.

I have ended up going to a UK web-based thyroid site. Although it has some good points, the difficulty of keeping track of threads and, most particularly, responses to my own posts, makes it tedious in the extreme.

[polygonum]

What is being gently pointed out to you is:

You completely missed the meaning of the first post.

You completely missed the reason for the LOL response you got.

You now appear also to have missed all the other posts on the thread - some of which make clear the meaning of the first post.

[Tim Lamb]

Topics tend to get exhausted. With nothing much to argue about, the more interesting posters tend to drift away.

The other problem is that a news group may be infected with a single issue troll to the detriment of others without adequate filtration on their newsreaders.

uk.d-i-y appeals at several levels. There is the *many minds* bringing wide knowledge to problem solving. There is the *gratification* of your experience/knowledge helping someone with little effort and no cost to yourself.

I suspect that the average age of posters is increasing but hope that you will manage to *see me out*:-)

regards

>

[John Williamson]

Apart from the steady stream of spam, of course.

I know of one group that has been ruined by one poster's attitude. The users went to a Facebook group, which was so hard to use that it died, too, and there's now a move to Twitter being proposed. Which will probably die too unless they've removed the 140 character limit.

That more or less sums up my diabetic group experience. There also seems to be tendency on the forum I mentioned to assume that the only way is the way the moderators/ administrators support, and I've heard of posts being removed that don't agree with them. The only work-related forum I subscribe to would work a lot better on usenet. It would certainly be a lot quicker to use when I'm surfing on the mobile, and even though there was a mobile version, it was almost totally unusable.

[Huge]

You and me, both.

[Huge]

That's even more depressing, for all kinds of reasons.

[Man at B&Q]

Do you advocate a similar punishment, for illegal development, to that which you consider appropriate for being a 60 year old cyclist?

MBQ

[John Rumm]

Apart from our own little corner or course, still going strong at 6 - 7k posts/month. ;-)

[Huge]

Hurrah!

[polygonum]

I have hated the occasions on which I have used GG to post. Doesn't do things like remove sigs. :-)

[polygonum]

I have hated the occasions on which I have used GG to post. Doesn't do things like remove sigs. :-)

[geoff]

In message , harry writes

You are, professor H, you are

You have so totally failed to grasp the point of the thread

BTW, have you got a large field at the back of your property ?

[geoff]

You're not telling me that people are actually doing rather than talking, are you

[ARWadsworth]

I thought the words "wants an overpriced 2nd rate job doing on his driveway" in the original post were a bit of a giveaway:-)

[ARWadsworth]

A Mad Eye Moody?

[Fredxx]

Not so long ago the local council had a legal duty to house people. Shame that was revoked.

There is at least a moral obligation that local councils ensure sufficient land is made available for houses and other residential accommodation.

We are now building houses smaller than ever, smaller that the back-to-back house that have been demolished in recent decades, and smaller than accommodation built behind the Iron Curtain pre 1980's.

If there wasn't a 5,000,000 council waiting list, I would have far less sympathy.

[Man at B&Q]

Why should there be a duty to house people who, so it seems, have houses in their own home country but choose to come to the UK to live the life of the "traveller"? There are plenty of camp sites and caravan sites, hotels and B&Bs even, where they can pay to stay just like other visitors to the UK.

MBQ