Usenet decline.

[Kaz Kylheku]

You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.

Okay, I know about providers cutting service, and the obvious impact
on binary traffic.

But how does that translate to a decline in these comp.* discussion
groups?

I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any more?

You'd think that comp.* people can find their way to an NNTP server.

Maybe they were here for the sake of the newbies all along? So now that hordes
of drooling masses can't find their way to your favorite comp.* group, you go
away? What? (And that after years of complaining about the damn September
that won't end!)

So what are all those people doing to get their Usenet fix? I can't believe
someone would rather, for instance, log into some obscure discussion website,
written by user interface morons.

It looks to me like the good old Usenet is back. People with a clue should be
flooding back in here. Spread the word?

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

I think it's the reverse. Usenet, in absolute numbers didn't decline,
but on the contrary, benefited from a big increase.

Of course, in relative numbers it became insignificant, compared to the
porn eDonkey and BitTorrent traffic, or even as you mentionned, to the
web forum ads traffic.

But you cannot expect a whole planet to be hackers and geeks.

Well, unless you start with an empty planet to begin with, and fill it
with hackers and geeks only.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2011/12/27/elon_musk_spacex_will_bring_man_to_mars_in_less_than_20_years_video_.html

So my point is that we still have the same number of hackers roaming the
newsgroups. Only now there are billions of non-geeks also using the
web.



--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.

[Alex Mizrahi]

> So what are all those people doing to get their Usenet fix? I can't believe
> someone would rather, for instance, log into some obscure discussion website,
> written by user interface morons.

I think people migrated to blogs and forums of different kinds.
Blogs make sense if you make a large post, but discussion usually sucks.
I agree that traditional forums have inferior UI (IMHO), but many find
them "ok".
But there are specialized kinds of forums
-- stackexchange (stackoverflow) is great for questions-and-answers
discussions
-- reddit is great for article discussions

Neither is particularly suited for lengthy discussions among people who
know each other like we have on USENET. But I guess people either do not
feel a need for such discussions, want wider audience, or are clueless.

To summarize, USENET is mostly a form of socialization for nerds, and
demand for this product is vanishing.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2011-12-31 07:14:35 +0000, Kaz Kylheku said:

> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.

I don't either. I kind of see why, for instance, blogs have become a
big thing, because they're a fairly good way of people publishing
article-style content (and combined with something like instapaper,
they can be really compelling). But the whole web-forum thing (in any
form: attached to blogs or not) is just crap, and its especially crap
compared to usenet: even the rather rudimentary newsreader I have now
beats crap out of any web-forum thing I've seen as an interface.

I've heard people say that the reason for the decline is that people
providing news servers are very vulnerable to content appearing over
which they have no control, but for which they then can get sued, and
have been sued in various cases. That's clearly an abuse of the system
-- there ought to be some kind of "common carrier" (is that the right
term) defence -- but I think they did get sued in various cases, and
lost. So any kind of entity worth suing (such as a university)
probably doesn't want to run a news server any more. But there are
still people who run perfectly adequate ones, who are easy to find, so
that argument seems a bit hollow really. Also, the web forum places
are presumably also vulnerable to
getting-sued-for-content-they-did-not-originate and some of them
(Facebook, google) should be very attractive targets indeed for the
suing people. Perhaps they are just better at suppressing content they
don't like.

I guess another reason might be that, because institutions don't run
their own news servers now, they also can't have institution-local
newsgroups which get used as noticeboards &c. So they need another
solution for that, which probably means some kind of web forum thing
(probably run by google or someone, but password controlled, so it
looks secure though of course google get to mine all your information).
That means that students &c don't get exposed to usenet, thus
hastening the decline.

But it does seem odd to me.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2011-12-31, Pascal J. Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:
> So my point is that we still have the same number of hackers roaming the
> newsgroups. Only now there are billions of non-geeks also using the
> web.

Do we, though? I have the sense that a good number of the ones I remember
seem to have disappeared. Maybe infrastructure/connectivity issues really are a
tipping point for some people.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2011-12-31, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
> I guess another reason might be that, because institutions don't run
> their own news servers now, they also can't have institution-local
> newsgroups which get used as noticeboards &c. So they need another

I was thinking of this also. And the obvious problem there is that if you lose
your local news server (likely because /that/ news server has lost its upstream
provider), then you may really have nowhere to go other than Google Groups,
which is crap. The reason would be: no outgoing port 119 access through your
draconian corporate firewall to get to an alternative server. Oops!

People may be in need of a proxying solutions that go over port 80 and use the
HTTP protocol (to defeat firewalls that do allow port 80, but also parse for
HTTP).

In general, maybe Usenet needs to start supporting HTTP transport: it could be
time for NNTP over HTTP.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2011-12-31 17:13:22 +0000, Kaz Kylheku said:

> People may be in need of a proxying solutions that go over port 80 and use the
> HTTP protocol (to defeat firewalls that do allow port 80, but also parse for
> HTTP).

There's at least one (hem, the one I'm using) whch does this already,
it turns out (I'm not using the port-80 server, but I will try next
time I am trapped somewhere with restrictions (most of the time I now
use my own little 3g/wifi gadget for access from my laptop at work,
which doesn't suffer from this).

[Steven E. Harris]

Alex Mizrahi <alex.m...@gmail.com> writes:

> But there are specialized kinds of forums
> -- stackexchange (stackoverflow) is great for questions-and-answers

It's good, but it's not a suitable replacement for USENET. Despite the
numerical reputation system, it seems to celebrate the clueless and the
careless, as opposed to good USENET group like comp.lang.lisp, which
makes a newbie's entry a more trepidatious affair, but in time teaches
him how to behave, who to trust with which topics, and how to contribute
in a valuable way.

By contrast, StackOverflow -- the StackExchange site I visit most
frequently -- is for many a speed game: A lazy or indifferent poster
submits an ill-formed question, and those hungry for reputation race to
post the first responses, rewarding the question's poster with undue
effort and attention in trade for recognition. Note, though, that once a
few answers arrive, and especially once an answer is accepted, the
attention given to the question falls off rapidly. A question answered
poorly will rarely be corrected, and, even if a hero attempts to set the
record straight, he's effectively arguing with /the person who asked the
question/, who likely isn't fit to resolve the argument.

Voting on answers is meant to help here, but I wonder if people who
search questions and read the answers pay more attention to the accepted
answer or to the answer that eventually receives the most
votes. Unfortunately, there's no way (that I know of) for the crowd to
usurp the question author's decision as to which answer is "best."
Perhaps the "community Wiki" conversion handles this situation.

I've listened to every one of Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood's podcasts on
the development of the site and platform, and I know that their stated
goals for the platform included creating "living documents" that sift
the best information to the top and keep it accurate over time. Lately I
see more and more noise in the contributions, and it doesn't feel nearly
as worthy of archiving as CLL has in the eleven years or so that I've
been reading it.

> Neither is particularly suited for lengthy discussions among people
> who know each other like we have on USENET. But I guess people either
> do not feel a need for such discussions, want wider audience, or are
> clueless.

One of the beautiful things about USENET (and NNTP) is its granting of
experiential control to each user. By that I mean that the client
software is decoupled from the hosted discussion, and that each user is
free to choose his own tools for reading and participating in the
discussion. The information created lives apart from those
client-related decisions, as evidenced by the DejaNews/Google Groups
archive surviving behind a Web front-end, even if few of those
constituent contributions were made using any Web-related technology.

Wanting that power of customization and being skilled enough to use it
is no longer common among computer users; that skill was once a
prerequisite, but it's arguably the success of software evolution that
most people can /use/ computers today without also needing to understand
how they work or how to program them. The open and empowering
opportunity offered by the USENET /access model/ is now seen as a
burden. It's competing against ever-slicker Web-fronted systems that
/each collect a maintain a disparate set of information/. (Twitter is a
not-quite-as-open counterexample, with a variety of client software
fronting a common information pool.) It's as if dropping one newsreader
for a newer alternative not only provided you with a nicer interface,
but also forced you to now participate in a wholly separate USENET.

One more point: Much lisp Lisp, USENET is the dog that everyone likes to
kick, and the would-be defenders are nowhere to be found. Apparently
there was a phase when a lot of people must have /wanted/ to get
involved in USENET (my guess is around 1998 through 2002), but had
trouble wrestling with that freedom I described earlier, and also
perhaps had trouble socially with navigating long discussion threads. I
expect that the latter is again partly due to poor software choices, and
with inadequate skill in using the available software, but people
suffered regardless. Those experienced are now codified as exaggerated
"wisdom" that USENET was horrible and needs to die, as if the whole
system was just a barely-acceptable resting stop on the way to the Web
really solving the problem.

The aforementioned Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood promulgate this
opinion. As much as I adore the StackExchange system, if they think that
the StackOverflow site is a fitting replacement for USENET as I know it,
they are sadly mistaken.

--
Steven E. Harris

[Nicolas Neuss]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> writes:

> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.
>
> Okay, I know about providers cutting service, and the obvious impact
> on binary traffic.
>
> But how does that translate to a decline in these comp.* discussion
> groups?
>
> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any
> more?

I think that quite a lot (my estimate would be: about 20-30%) of those
people who once posted frequently at c.l.l. are still lurking here (or
at least take a glance from time to time).

However, those people are usually silent, first because they are no
newbies anymore who are in urgent need of answers, second, because
Usenet is no more the medium of choice for newbies who need to be
answered, and third, because thought- and discussion/flamewar-provoking
opinions are posted much more rarely than in earlier times (especially
those times, when Erik was still around).

> You'd think that comp.* people can find their way to an NNTP server.

Yes.

Nicolas

[Chris Riesbeck]

On 1/1/2012 11:33 AM, Nicolas Neuss wrote:
> Kaz Kylheku<k...@kylheku.com> writes:
>
>> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.
>>
>> Okay, I know about providers cutting service, and the obvious impact
>> on binary traffic.
>>
>> But how does that translate to a decline in these comp.* discussion
>> groups?
>>
>> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any
>> more?
>
> I think that quite a lot (my estimate would be: about 20-30%) of those
> people who once posted frequently at c.l.l. are still lurking here (or
> at least take a glance from time to time).

As a Usenet user since the early 80's, comp.lang.lisp seems as active to
me now as in its heyday, and much stronger than a fallow period a number
of years back.

What I see is a big drop of available groups. Many old groups have
faded, which is to be expected, but they've not been replaced by new
ones. For example, I see no group with "agile" in the title. All that
discussion, and there's a lot, is happening in Yahoo Groups and elsewhere.

[Peter Stiernström]

Nicolas Neuss <last...@scipolis.de> writes:

> I think that quite a lot (my estimate would be: about 20-30%) of those
> people who once posted frequently at c.l.l. are still lurking here (or
> at least take a glance from time to time).
>
> However, those people are usually silent, first because they are no
> newbies anymore who are in urgent need of answers, second, because
> Usenet is no more the medium of choice for newbies who need to be
> answered, and third, because thought- and
> discussion/flamewar-provoking opinions are posted much more rarely
> than in earlier times (especially those times, when Erik was still
> around).

I have been reading comp.lang.lisp for years on end without ever posting
here. I can imagine other people do to. So tonight I thought I might as
well make a first post to let you know I've been priming my lisp
knowledge from you for a long time now :-)

[Philippe Brochard]

I second this, I have been reading comp.lang.lisp for years too but I
post not so often. BTW comp.lang.lisp is a great source of information.

Regards.

[Nic]

On Jan 2, 3:35 pm, pe...@stiernstrom.se (Peter Stiernström) wrote:

I am also in the same category as Peter but probably have been here
for a shorter time. I have been going through here sometime in
sequence and sometimes by topic and it has been greatly helpful. I
have yet to ask anything here as i am still a newbie and my question
have mostly answered by old posts and people on #lisp. but as Steve
said earlier, i have been on Stackoverflow and it's in no way a
replacement for USENET.

[Alex Mizrahi]

> What I see is a big drop of available groups. Many old groups have
> faded, which is to be expected, but they've not been replaced by new
> ones. For example, I see no group with "agile" in the title.

Try gmane.
gmane.comp.programming.modeling.agile seems to be a pretty active one.

> All that
> discussion, and there's a lot, is happening in Yahoo Groups and elsewhere.

A lot happens in mailing lists which are not very different from USENET,
especially if you use gmane. The only thing which bothers me is a need
to subscribe to be able to post. If they would automatically authorize
users which come from gmane that would be perfect.

[Tim Bradshaw]

Annual stats for a couple of groups I read are below (from Google, so
perhaps not really reliable, both tables remove partial years). Both
look as if they reached a peak in 2005-2006 and are now in fairly steep
decline (in gnuplot "plot ... with steps" is pretty good for these).

comp.lang.lisp
1987 583
1988 693
1989 1291
1990 1364
1991 1837
1992 2414
1993 2573
1994 4348
1995 3343
1996 3850
1997 7568
1998 7075
1999 12404
2000 14176
2001 18367
2002 25954
2003 26263
2004 27261
2005 28765
2006 28086
2007 22623
2008 21117
2009 21196
2010 13649
2011 8886

rec.bycicles.tech

1993 11592
1994 21891
1995 27352
1996 35178
1997 35070
1998 46775
1999 53074
2000 61083
2001 59311
2002 57370
2003 66053
2004 64011
2005 56380
2006 67815
2007 59139
2008 46921
2009 50005
2010 33237
2011 26275

[sidney]

Kaz Kylheku wrote, On 1/01/12 6:13 AM:

> On 2011-12-31, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
> People may be in need of a proxying solutions that go over port 80 and use the
> HTTP protocol (to defeat firewalls that do allow port 80, but also parse for
> HTTP).

I have just started trying out eternal-septmber.org as a free provider of
text-only usenet groups. All they require is to register with an email
address. They accept connection to their nntp server over SSL on port 443,
which I think would get through most firewalls that permit general https
access to web servers. This is my first post using their service, so I'll see
how that goes.

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Perhaps writing about your experience, how to setup your newsreader and
subscribe, etc, on the various blogs and forums, would be good to
attract newbies to usenet?

[RG]

In article <87ehvfk...@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com>,

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <p...@informatimago.com> wrote:

> sidney <sid...@sidney.com> writes:
>
> > Kaz Kylheku wrote, On 1/01/12 6:13 AM:
> >> On 2011-12-31, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
> >> People may be in need of a proxying solutions that go over port 80 and use
> >> the
> >> HTTP protocol (to defeat firewalls that do allow port 80, but also parse
> >> for
> >> HTTP).
> >
> > I have just started trying out eternal-septmber.org as a free provider of
> > text-only usenet groups. All they require is to register with an email
> > address. They accept connection to their nntp server over SSL on port 443,
> > which I think would get through most firewalls that permit general https
> > access to web servers. This is my first post using their service, so I'll
> > see
> > how that goes.
>
> Perhaps writing about your experience, how to setup your newsreader and
> subscribe, etc, on the various blogs and forums, would be good to
> attract newbies to usenet?

I think the problem is much more straightforward:

> Maybe they were here for the sake of the newbies all along? So now that
> hordes of drooling masses can't find their way to your favorite comp.*

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> group, you go away?

Consider the possibility that the "hordes of drooling masses" as Kaz
puts it can find their way just fine, but don't like what they see when
they get here and choose to take their business elsewhere. Maybe the CL
soup just isn't that good any more [1].

rg

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soup_Nazi

[Tim Bradshaw]

RG <rNOS...@flownet.com> wrote:
> Consider the possibility that the "hordes of drooling masses" as Kaz
> puts it can find their way just fine, but don't like what they see when
> they get here and choose to take their business elsewhere. Maybe the CL
> soup just isn't that good any more [1].

If you look at traffic stats for unrelated newsgroups (I gave a couple of
samples the other day, but I've since made some better pictures for a bunch
of groups which make the situation much clearer) you can immediately see
that this is not CLL specific, but much more general.

[ddd]

On Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:14:35 +0000 (UTC), Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com>
wrote:

> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.
>

I think a part of the decline is through google groups and yahoo groups.
Basically the google interface replaced nntp for a lot of readers, and they
can't differentiate between google groups and usenet anymore. A lot new
groups are created on google groups only (e.g. about varius web and js
stuff). They don't go to usenet anymore (and google controls the view and
gets the advertising revenue). Next to that what others told about
stackoverflow, blogs etc.

[Ralph Schleicher]

sidney <sid...@sidney.com> writes:

> I have just started trying out eternal-septmber.org as a free provider
> of text-only usenet groups. All they require is to register with an
> email address. They accept connection to their nntp server over SSL on
> port 443, which I think would get through most firewalls that permit
> general https access to web servers. This is my first post using their
> service, so I'll see how that goes.

Hi,

I use eternal-september.org since April 2011 via a local leafnode.
Reason was that the German Telekom shut down their news servers.
Sometimes eternal-september.org is down for a couple of hours but
nothing serious for private use. For a free service reliability
is quite good.

--
Ralph

[Kejia柯嘉]

Usenet needs to be evolved, e.g. to clound. It's not economical to download and to save copies locally, and so not environmentally friend :-)

[Giorgos Keramidas]

Maybe people move to places behind overly restrictive firewalls. Even
so, it's often easy to find the local administrator and ask for an
exception. I've done it a few times already.

[Alex Mizrahi]

> Usenet needs to be evolved, e.g. to clound. It's not economical to download and to save copies locally, and so not environmentally friend :-)

When you visit a web page you download user interface graphics (CSS,
images), layout (HTML) and logic (JS). While with NNTP you download
only text content, with UI being a local program.

So if something is not environment friendly, it is the web, not NNTP.

[Paul Wallich]

And the size of the entire usenet text feed is probable less than your
average youtube video...

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-07 18:53:10 +0000, Giorgos Keramidas said:

> Maybe people move to places behind overly restrictive firewalls. Even
> so, it's often easy to find the local administrator and ask for an
> exception. I've done it a few times already.

This is probably part of it. I think the era when you could expect to
be able to use your employer-provided machine & employer-provided
network for things like usenet is over, but people are probably still
expecting it to work.

[Giorgos Keramidas]

Yes, that's true. The terms of most contracts nowadays are far more
nefarious than this. Some of them barely fall short of asking you to
sign over the souls of your descendants up to N generations in the
future.

So it's indeed part of the problem, but it's a bit more complicated than
putting the entire blame to the local administrators. I have found that
the local system administrators are often a *lot* helpful, even in the
places where you sit behind draconial firewalls.

So it's not so much a problem of restrictive firewalls or lack of access
to the NNTP feed.

I think the decline of the Usenet is more related to the 'entry points'
youngsters use to access the network. When I started using a computer we
had access to the network through shared physical spaces, like the
computer room of a University department. This had the side-effect of
seeing other people at work, sitting by their side and looking over
their shoulder as they used 'strange' tools like gopher, trn, elm, pine,
vi and Emacs. The fact that we were _forced_ by the room itself to sit
in crowded rooms full of text terminals was both limiting and an
enabler. It was limiting because we didn't have access all the time or
from more convenient places/times. It was an enabler because we flocked
around the 'local gurus' and let knowledge sip into our brains from
social interactions with the local experts almost as much as from the
text terminals we were staring all the time.

Now a great deal of young people start using the network from their
mobile phone. Instead of sitting in the same room with other people who
use the same tools, they can access the network from pretty much
_everywhere_. And this is good. But it also limits the forms of tools
that they come across to, pretty much, only what can travel over HTTP
and display in a browser window.

So where will young people get in touch with NNTP? Not through a Usenet
client. Not through a terminal room full of people typing away in trn,
slrn, pine or Emacs windows. NNTP stands a chance of reaching out to
the younger users only if it also has a forum-like, a web-based UI or a
mobile client application for iOS or Android.

That chance is pretty slim.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2012-01-09, Giorgos Keramidas <kera...@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
> I think the decline of the Usenet is more related to the 'entry points'
> youngsters use to access the network.

Uh huh! Youngsters like no-longer-here Kenny Tilton. :)

[George Neuner]

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:51:32 +0100, Giorgos Keramidas
<kera...@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:

>So where will young people get in touch with NNTP? Not through a Usenet
>client. Not through a terminal room full of people typing away in trn,
>slrn, pine or Emacs windows. NNTP stands a chance of reaching out to
>the younger users only if it also has a forum-like, a web-based UI or a
>mobile client application for iOS or Android.
>
>That chance is pretty slim.

Thunderbird has a news reader, but it's unlikely many would change
their email application just to get NNTP. And there is a plug-in for
Firefox called InfoRSS that handles NNTP.

But you have to know these things exist.

The big question is: even if someone were to create a decent mobile
client, how would you advertise it? Usenet is not exactly well known
any more.

George

[Tim Bradshaw]

Giorgos Keramidas <kera...@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>
> I think the decline of the Usenet is more related to the 'entry points'
> youngsters use to access the network. When I started using a computer we
> had access to the network through shared physical spaces, like the
> computer room of a University department. This had the side-effect of
> seeing other people at work, sitting by their side and looking over
> their shoulder as they used 'strange' tools like gopher, trn, elm, pine,

> vi and Emacs. [...]

>
> Now a great deal of young people start using the network from their

> mobile phone. [...]

Good answer, I think: I'd not thought of how social computers used to be,
and how they have become pseudo-social now. Sitting in a terminal room
*talking* to other people is something that, I guess, has gone now.

[Tim Bradshaw]

George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net> wrote:

> The big question is: even if someone were to create a decent mobile
> client, how would you advertise it? Usenet is not exactly well known
> any more.
>

NewsTap is already a fine client, I think.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2012-01-09, George Neuner <gneu...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:51:32 +0100, Giorgos Keramidas
><kera...@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>
>>So where will young people get in touch with NNTP? Not through a Usenet
>>client. Not through a terminal room full of people typing away in trn,
>>slrn, pine or Emacs windows. NNTP stands a chance of reaching out to
>>the younger users only if it also has a forum-like, a web-based UI or a
>>mobile client application for iOS or Android.
>>
>>That chance is pretty slim.
>
> Thunderbird has a news reader, but it's unlikely many would change
> their email application just to get NNTP. And there is a plug-in for
> Firefox called InfoRSS that handles NNTP.

The question, "what barriers are there that prevent
Usenet from attracting newbies" is separate from why I created
this discussion.

There has been a big decline just among the oldbies, which can't
all be related to disability and death. :)

[Tim Bradshaw]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:
.
>
> There has been a big decline just among the oldbies, which can't
> all be related to disability and death. :)

Partly it may be boredom. I've sat in front of a computer every working
day for 25 years, and I'm a little bored by now: if I still had any other
skills, I'd be pretty happy to never look at one again. And I'm a relative
newcomer.

[Kaz Kylheku]

Everyone suddenly bored at the same time? Hmm.

[Paul Wallich]

Groups like this one are mostly run with positive feedback. So you don't
need much of an initial dropoff to spur a much lower steady state.

paul

[Tim Bradshaw]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:

> Everyone suddenly bored at the same time? Hmm.

No, a steady decline as the users from the 90s and before wander away, and
new users don't appear. An ongoing decline, not falling off a cliff, is
what is in the traffic stats.

[kent...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:14:35 AM UTC-5, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any more?

One of us got a day job. And a home ISP sans Usenet.

hk

[Zach Beane]

Here's a euro-nickel, kid, get yourself a real NNTP provider
(individual.net).

Zach

[Nicolas Neuss]

And why not the free eternal-september?

Nicolas

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Perhaps because it doesn't suffer the small glitches eternal-september
is reported to have from time to time?

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-09 21:34:58 +0000, Kaz Kylheku said:

> Uh huh! Youngsters like no-longer-here Kenny Tilton. :)

Careful what you call from the vasty deep: it might come.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-09 21:34:58 +0000, Kaz Kylheku said:

> Uh huh! Youngsters like no-longer-here Kenny Tilton. :)

[Nicolas Neuss]

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <p...@informatimago.com> writes:

> Nicolas Neuss <last...@scipolis.de> writes:
>
>> Zach Beane <xa...@xach.com> writes:
>>
>>> kent...@gmail.com writes:
>>>
>>>> On Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:14:35 AM UTC-5, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>>>> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any more?
>>>>
>>>> One of us got a day job. And a home ISP sans Usenet.
>>>
>>> Here's a euro-nickel, kid, get yourself a real NNTP provider
>>> (individual.net).
>>
>> And why not the free eternal-september?
>
> Perhaps because it doesn't suffer the small glitches eternal-september
> is reported to have from time to time?

OK, I did read Ralph Schleicher's mail, but it is not clear to me how
serious these problems are. What are the opinions of the
eternal-september users? Should it be recommended or should one rather
recommend to pay 10 EUR/yr for something like "individual.net".

Nicolas

[Tamas Papp]

I have been using eternal-september for a while without any glitches
(I am not saying that there were no outages, just that I didn't notice
them).

Given that it is free, I would recommend that you just try it and
switch to another service if you don't find it reliable.

Best,

Tamas

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-10 16:11:20 +0000, Nicolas Neuss said:

> OK, I did read Ralph Schleicher's mail, but it is not clear to me how
> serious these problems are. What are the opinions of the
> eternal-september users? Should it be recommended or should one rather
> recommend to pay 10 EUR/yr for something like "individual.net".

I use ES, it's fine. individual.net also looks good though, and
perhaps has a more viable model (ie you pay).

[Steven E. Harris]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> writes:

> There has been a big decline just among the oldbies, which can't
> all be related to disability and death.

Count me among the silent who were mostly locked out by the corporate
firewall (despite several appeals over the last four years). Yes, it was
possible to reach Usenet on the weekends from home, but usually by then
my motivation was weakened and my focus was on more recreational things.

Now that I'm with a different employer with a more lenient firewall, I'm
able to knit reading and writing here back into my daily work -- as it
was and as it should be.

--
Steven E. Harris

[Kaz Kylheku]

How predictable.

Why do you think I planted his full name?

Think of it as a reverse Google search. Drop his name, and within 24 hours, he
will show up, because, of course, you can count on him to be performing
"ego mining" searches several times a day.

Don't you believe for a second that this sunovabitch actually lurks here.

If that were the case, he could not help revealing (relieving?) himself
regularly, clawing at anything that smells like a troll.

[Bakul Shah]

One thing I have not seen mentioned (or missed). Usenet is a
single namespace. Only one place for lispers. One for
Schemers and so forth. And creating subgroups was always
contentious and bureaucratic. So each group in essence became
a club. People who wander in often get beaten up since they
don't know the rules. On the other hand, since Usenet is
mostly an anarchy, there is no effective negative feedback
mechanism to educate, or failing that, to ban the truly
obnoxious. Usenet's solution to that via `Moderated' groups
often adds too much delay. Given all this, it was just easier
to migrate to `forums'. Their interface sucks but they also
provide some other benefits and finer control.

[Tim Bradshaw]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:

> How predictable.

I suppose that kibo, however, won't come.

[Raffael Cavallaro]

On 2012-01-10 16:11:20 +0000, Nicolas Neuss said:

> What are the opinions of the
> eternal-september users?

I use eternal-september, but there have been many times when I had to
use google groups to read c.l.l because eternal-september was
unreachable for anywhere from several minutes to several hours.
Naturally ymmv, but if you want *reliable* usenet service, I would use
something other than eternal-september.

warmest regards,

Ralph

--
Raffael Cavallaro

[Nicolas Neuss]

Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> writes:

> On 2012-01-10, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
>> On 2012-01-09 21:34:58 +0000, Kaz Kylheku said:
>>
>>> Uh huh! Youngsters like no-longer-here Kenny Tilton. :)
>>
>> Careful what you call from the vasty deep: it might come.
>
> How predictable.

I don't think so.

> Why do you think I planted his full name?
>
> Think of it as a reverse Google search. Drop his name, and within 24
> hours, he will show up, because, of course, you can count on him to be
> performing "ego mining" searches several times a day.
>
> Don't you believe for a second that this sunovabitch actually lurks
> here.

I am very sure that _if_ Kenny did really lurk here at all, he didn't
lurk here very often, because he answered the posts only after some days
and only after I asked him by email what he is doing now (refering to
the questions posted here).

Nicolas

[kenny]

On Jan 9, 4:34 pm, Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:

> On 2012-01-09, Giorgos Keramidas <keram...@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>
> > I think the decline of the Usenet is more related to the 'entry points'
> > youngsters use to access the network.
>
> Uh huh! Youngsters like no-longer-here Kenny Tilton. :)

I can't find anyone younger than me or less mature.

Met a nice young girl at the Elbo Room and she said, "How old are
you?".

"Sixty," I say.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Condolences on my age -- definitely a milestone.

hk

[Alex Mizrahi]

> Perhaps because it doesn't suffer the small glitches eternal-september
> is reported to have from time to time?

news.dotsrc.org has fewer groups, but is pretty reliable.

Also, it is easy to configure leafnode to pull from multiple servers,
see here: http://aioe.org/index.php?leafnode
As long as at least one upstream server works you won't notice a
problem. (And if they all are down it will just look as if group has no
new messages ;))

[Xah Lee]

On Dec 30 2011, 11:14 pm, Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:
> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.
>
> Okay, I know about providers cutting service, and the obvious impact
> on binary traffic.
>
> But how does that translate to a decline in these comp.* discussion
> groups?

>
> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any more?
>

> You'd think that comp.* people can find their way to an NNTP server.
>
> Maybe they were here for the sake of the newbies all along?  So now that hordes
> of drooling masses can't find their way to your favorite comp.* group, you go
> away? What?  (And that after years of complaining about the damn September
> that won't end!)
>
> So what are all those people doing to get their Usenet fix?  I can't believe
> someone would rather, for instance, log into some obscure discussion website,
> written by user interface morons.
>
> It looks to me like the good old Usenet is back. People with a clue should be
> flooding back in here. Spread the word?

lol. it's dead precisely because there's this bunch of hacker tech
geeker types, with views such as exactly you just expressed.

Further readings.

〈Death of Newsgroups〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ2/death_of_newsgroups.html

〈comp.lang.lisp is 95% Spam〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ2/google_group_lisp_spam.html

〈Spy vs Spy; Tech Geekers vs Spammers〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geekers_vs_spammers.html

〈Computer Language Popularity Trend〉
http://xahlee.org/lang_traf/index.html

〈What is a Tech Geeker?〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geeker.html

〈Computing Culture: What's Hacker?〉
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/whats_hacker.html

〈Paul Graham's Infatuation with the Concept of Hacker〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/Paul_Graham_language_design.html

〈Language, Purity, Cult, and Deception〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lang_purity_cult_deception.html

〈HTML5 Doctype, Validation, X-UA-Compatible, and Why Do I Hate
Hackers〉
http://xahlee.org/js/html5_validation_doctype.html

〈the Death of Dennis Ritchie, John McCarthy, Steve Jobs, and Hackers〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/Death_of_Dennis_Ritchie.html

Xah

[Xah Lee]

that's not to bad Kenny. Recently i had this experience...
http://xahlee.blogspot.com/2012/01/im-more-than-you-two-put-together.html

plain text version follows:
-----------------------------------------

♥⚤: I'm More Than You Two Put Together!

while watching ♥ yesterday, 2 hot chicks fing their brains out with a
guy POV style [Xah's Edu Corner: POV = Point Of View. In the INDUSTRY,
it means the guy fing is also the guy shooting (pun!), holding the cam
on his hand], then the guy asked the chicks how old are they. One is
20, the other is also 20. Then the guy murmured: “i'm more than u 2
put together.”. Then, i thought to myself, that applies to me too.

LOL. filed under #funny. While this was funny, i felt indignant!

if u want to see it, it's 〔www.you♥.com/watch/364701〕

replace all ♥ by you know what.

the remarked happened at 4:48.
---------------------------------------

So, Kenny, you can proudly say, i'm more than 3 of you put together!

Xah

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2012-01-13, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 30 2011, 11:14 pm, Kaz Kylheku <k...@kylheku.com> wrote:
>> It looks to me like the good old Usenet is back. People with a clue should be
>> flooding back in here. Spread the word?
>
> lol. it's dead precisely because there's this bunch of hacker tech
> geeker types, with views such as exactly you just expressed.

But I'm only concerned myself with "hacker tech geeker" type newsgroups.

Of course I understand why "rec.gardening" or whatever might be killed by web
forums.

[Xah Lee]

i'll tell u how to revive comp.lang.lisp. If all you follow it, i can
guaranteed that comp.lang.lisp will revive immediately!

• all of you, switch to
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!myforums
as your newsgroup viewer, immediately.

• Stop your fucking bottom post. In fact, don't even quote the
message. If you do want to quote, quote no more than one single
sentence. And don't use the fucking “> ”.

• electric shock yourself whenever you felt a urge to bitch about how
other is top/bottom posting, or whether he truncated lines, or whether
he used unicode.

• use real names.

• add profile info, put a profile picture of yourself (and, not
picture of some fucking planet, drawings, or batman.). e.g. fill info
about your gender, age, code/job experience, etc. (ommit them only if
you really want)

• add other link/contact info, such as your facebook, g+, twitter,
blog, linkedin, stackoverflow, etc, if you have one.

yeah, let's make the world a better place. There's a cure for tech
geeking. Follow me!

Xah

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-13 20:23:17 +0000, Xah Lee said:

> lol. it's dead precisely because there's this bunch of hacker tech
> geeker types, with views such as exactly you just expressed.

Unfortunately, the only reason it was ever alive was those same people
so this proposed explanation does not hold water.

[Robert Klemme]

On 31.12.2011 08:14, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.
>
> Okay, I know about providers cutting service, and the obvious impact
> on binary traffic.
>
> But how does that translate to a decline in these comp.* discussion
> groups?
>
> I mean, all those who are not here any more, why are they not here any more?
>
> You'd think that comp.* people can find their way to an NNTP server.

Just one data point: when the gateway between comp.lang.ruby, ruby-forum
and ruby-talk mailinglist was up, there was a lot of traffic in c.l.r.
Since the gateway has been removed traffic dropped to a trickle.
Traffic in the other two mediums seems healthy as ever. Go figure.

Kind regards

robert

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

[OMouse]

How would a gateway be setup for comp.lang.lisp and some other mailing lists?

[Xah Lee]

but it holds honey? and honey is sweeter than water. FACT!

Xah

[Robert Klemme]

On 14.01.2012 21:04, OMouse wrote:
> How would a gateway be setup for comp.lang.lisp and some other mailing lists?

Umm, I haven't done this but I figure it must be something like: Find
someone who is willing to host the gateway, find any gateway software or
write it yourself, install and operate it.

Cheers