I read about 10 different newsgroups. With the proliferation of other online sources and the dropping of Usenet by several providers, the traffic in my newsgroups has been slowly going away.
For the last week or so, this newsgroup has been the only one with posts
- not counting an occasional troller/spammer who gets through the filters.
Wonder how long this group will keep going?
Old people with old computers. :-)
Probably a long time. Woodworking, unlike other types of groups, CB radio buffs, hot pics of Cristina Aguilara, global warming, etc is not a fad.
I monitor about a half-dozen; three of which are roughly the same volume as r.w; one is about half the other is 3-5X the traffic.
I don't see usenet disappearing entirely for a while yet altho certainly the proliferation of the web forum is all that newbies generally ever see unless they're pointed to usenet by other users.
It's dead for all intents and purposes. Even if on life support, it should be shot and taken out of its misery.
The only people left are technophobes and grumpy old men too stubborn to change. Even "forums" are old school. There are woodworking groups on facebook and google+ that allow instant dialogue and video chatting.
In the time it takes to write this message and see a reply, an entire group of people could've discussed and solved a problem that we'll still be bitching and arguing about a month from now. Of course, that's the other reason this newsgroup is still breathing. People love to bitch and moan and we have fun doing it with each other.
There are several guys in here whose skill, knowledge and opinions I trust and that's pretty much the only reason I'm still here. If I could get all those guys active in the same facebook or google+ group, I'd place usenet in the same time capsule with my floppy discs and buggy whips.
It's not dead, it's just being leached off of
see your own post 3rd one down in the middle
I have firmly resisted Facebook and pretty much all of the web site based groups/forums. Despite the noise here at times I prefer it to the moderated/censored groups. Let people rise to the top or sink to the bottom on their own... censors interfere with natural selection!
There are also advantages to not being in real time contact for things like this... Read/write/leave and do something vs. read/write/read/write/read/write/what day is it? ;~)
On 9/10/2013 12:36 PM, -MIKE- wrote: ...
This grumpy ol' guy does none of the above (and won't)...
The most active group of those I mentioned is non-official support for a commercial software product the manufacturer of whom started a self-supported forum a couple of years ago so they could have more control than they have over usenet.
I have tried owing to some agreements I made with them to use it and provide aid there as have on the usenet group for years. It's simply too unwieldy and takes too long to use the web interface as all other forums or the other interfaces I've seen as compared to the plain text and threaded view of a classic newsreader. I've given it up after an effort of some months--it's just not worth the time/effort required. If fewer get the help I can offer there by not using the usenet portal, so be it; just way it'll have to be. Similarly for the other w-working sites I've seen--they're just too interface-intensive to be time-beneficial for my time invested/required.
Yeah but you have conform to the rules, here on usenet not so much.
Mark
No "rules" on either sites I mentioned.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Cold day when I get involved with facebook or google+.
Lew
Sorry, Mike, but that's exactly what is killing Usenet.
Rec.Craft.Metalworking - completely overrun but political and personal attacks by people who don't feel they need to follow the rules.
Along w/ the topposters... :)
I suspect the biggest hidden rule is more stringent spam blockers is generally the case w/ all I've seen. That isn't all _a_bad_thing_ (tm) but otoh it doesn't take terribly much effort to have effective-enough filters that even r.c.m mentioned above is pretty much benign.
And strangely, some of the really old timers, who participated here for years, can be contacted quicker on FaceBook (Tom Watson, Charlie Self, John Paquay, Luigi, David Eisan, among others), so not all the old wRec farts are Luddites. Go figure. ;)
Still don't feel, for my purposes, that FB is an alternative to the wRec; and G+ may just be a bit too full of hand tool snobs for most hanging on here.
Thought G+ was great for a while, can't abide web based forums, and have always gravitated back here out of preference. Just been too damned busy to do much but lurk lately.
Yep, that is something you would have had a tough time getting away with back in the early days of Usenet, before the big ISP's and corporate advertising, when a bunch of sympathetic and knowledgable sysadmins running BIND could still play hell with a rogue site that was not playing nice. :)
This is rather amusing... I never heard of the site so I went to look. To my surprise an item I posted years ago about the LI Woodworking Show shows up as a "Best Rated Discussion."
I also took a look at the Google Groups thing and found stuff of mine there
20+ years old...It is no wonder the search engines come up with millions of hits (though there are really only 100 that have been pirated!)
John
I'm reasonably satisfied with the Yahoo groups I belong to - except when Yahoo decides to "improve" it. But I avoid most of that brouhaha by getting posts sent to my email and replying via email. The only time I actually go to the site is to peruse the photos and files.
I just posted the following to them:
------------------------------------------------------------------------ I just discovered that you are ripping off posts to rec.woodworking and posting them here. Without attribution to rec.woodworking.
While this may not be illegal, it strikes me as reprehensible.
I will suggest to the wreck members that they start posting messages calling out your behavior. Will you keep ripping us off then?
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So lets start muttering about homeownershub and their piracy in every message :-).
I follow this group closely, but also take a peek now and then at Sawmill Creek, Lumberjocks and Router Forum. The wREC best meets my needs for sensible solutions to a pretty broad variety of woodworking tasks.
There's usually more than one right way of doing something and I've come to count on you guys (and gals)for laying out the options. And it's terrific that no one holds back on their opinions.
Larry
All those groups are floppy discs compared to what's available now.
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