Re: Blogs replacing Usenet problem?
Maxwell Lol
»Q«
no.to...@gmail.com <no.to...@gmail.com> wrote:
> = if ya'll are managing OK, it's because you are herd-followers,
> with never an original though, so just by luck the
> used-by-95%-of-the-population-sytem works OK for you.
Do you think the percentage of people incapable of managing ok is as
high as 5%?
> What can we do about this problem?
You could stop reading blogs.
Peter Huebner
followup to *nix groups deleted
In article <hco34m$j71$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
no.to...@gmail.com says...
[stuff]
I wonder inhowmuch you are getting blogs and forums confuddled in your
little rant.
As far as I can tell, generally blogs are for the kind of people who
like to wank on street corners as well as the kind of people who read
women's magazines. On the whole. [hyperbole and gratuitous
generalization disclaimer here] I am sure some blogs are written by
people who actually have something of substance to say, but can I be
bothered to look for them? The signal to noise ration is just too bad.
Too bad.
Forums, now, forums pretend at replacing usenet, and
a) they don't come close - they're just such a pain in the arse to use,
with no threading, no decent quoting, and wasting incredible space with
stupid avatars and inane sigs ... Try to find at a glance in a forum
what (information) you want, as opposed to a newsgroup: an exercise in
futility.
b) they mostly seem to attract the kind of people who read with their
lips moving. Who like to play with inane sigs, cute avatars and graphic
smileys. The kind of people who, on usenet, used to quote 150 lines of
text to put 'me, too' at the bottom (worse: at the top). Do we miss them
on usenet? I dare say, mostly we don't.
c) what really, really pisses me off is, that so many software and other
companies only have presence and provide support through forums these
days. I can see why they like it: they can kick and delete anybody who
says things they don't like to hear ... and they have the power of the
moderator(s); I've seen and heard of how that gets abused many times.
The guy who invented web forums should have his keyboard smashed over
his pointy head and his fingers contained safely in chainmail mittens so
he doesn't come up with any more crap like that. (I will refrain from
saying anything about slamming a heavy door on them)
What can we do about it? Not a great deal.
Try to introduce people to usenet who might make a useful contribution
or have things to say, that's about the extent of possible intervention.
f.w.i.w. -Peter
Jon Solberg
>
> followup to *nix groups deleted
>
> In article <hco34m$j71$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> no.to...@gmail.com says...
>
> [stuff]
>
> I wonder inhowmuch you are getting blogs and forums confuddled in your
> little rant.
>
> As far as I can tell, generally blogs are for the kind of people who
> like to wank on street corners as well as the kind of people who read
> women's magazines. On the whole. [hyperbole and gratuitous
> generalization disclaimer here] I am sure some blogs are written by
> people who actually have something of substance to say, but can I be
> bothered to look for them? The signal to noise ration is just too bad.
Hear, hear (or should I say 'AOL' here? ;-).
--
Jon Solberg (remove "nospam." from email address).
Steve Bonine
> What can we do about it? Not a great deal.
> Try to introduce people to usenet who might make a useful contribution
> or have things to say, that's about the extent of possible intervention.
I submit that introducing people to Usenet isn't going to help unless
there is something here that interests them. Obviously this isn't the
newsgroup to draw new users to Usenet . . . "Come and read the riveting
discussion of news readers". After they're hooked and want a better
experience, maybe, but not until then.
If you have a buddy who's interested in some topic, and there's a great
discussion of it on Usenet, then it makes sense to introduce him because
there's something here for him. Unfortunately, the topics where there's
a great discussion on Usenet are few and becoming fewer.
It's rather a chicken and egg problem. Until there is a useful
discussion in a newsgroup, there's little reason to visit it. Finding a
core group of people to establish the discussion is the hard part. Once
it's going, you have a fighting chance of attracting more folks.
But to bring my comments back to the actual topic of this newsgroup, one
of the things that turns people off who might end up as valuable users
is the elitist attitude that they run into, and that's nowhere more
evident than in the area of news readers. It's a little like showing up
at a sandlot baseball game in K-Mart shoes . . . people will judge your
ability to play baseball based on the brand of shoes you're wearing;
you'll be the last guy picked even if you're the best player there. So
we see someone posting with Outlook or, even worse, using Google, and we
assume that they're idiots. Rather than encouraging these people as
potential contributors, they're insulted or even killfiled. We were all
newbies once.
Yes, there's a lot of inane crap posted by new users. But some small
percentage of them are intelligent humans who, if they stick around,
will contribute to Usenet in a positive way. The alternative is
watching the user base continue to decline to the point where Usenet is
a tiny niche community where the only people there are looking for
esoteric information on archaic computer minutiae. I suppose that's
exactly the Usenet that some folks would love to see.
Frank Slootweg
[...]
> So we see someone posting with Outlook or, even worse, using Google,
> and we assume that they're idiots. Rather than encouraging these
> people as potential contributors, they're insulted or even killfiled.
> We were all newbies once.
Indeed! Bashing Outlook Express et al users, is not only elitist, but
also stupid (assuming there's a difference between the two).
For example, I find it both funny and telling, that the very person
who *maintains* INN - i.e. the world's *main* News server software -
uses Outlook Express (well, its Vista replacement, Windows Mail) to
post, also *about* INN.
Moral: There's bashing and having (and using) a brain, and they're
mutually exclusive.
[...]
mechanic
> Forums, now, forums pretend at replacing usenet, and
> a) they don't come close - they're just such a pain in the arse to use,
> with no threading, no decent quoting, and wasting incredible space with
> stupid avatars and inane sigs ... Try to find at a glance in a forum
> what (information) you want, as opposed to a newsgroup: an exercise in
> futility.
>
No forums are much more useful for technical issues because they are
searchable using familiar tools. Formatting quotes and code snippets
helps a lot too.
Frank Slootweg
"familiar" is a subjective term. There are "familiar" searching tools
for Usenet as well. That they may not be (as) "familar" to *you* is not
relevant.
> Formatting quotes and code snippets helps a lot too.
And that can be done on Usenet as well. Just use the right newsreader
or/and HTML if you must.
mechanic
> mechanic <mech...@example.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-11-06, Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> wrote:
>>
>> > Forums, now, forums pretend at replacing usenet, and
>> > a) they don't come close - they're just such a pain in the arse to use,
>> > with no threading, no decent quoting, and wasting incredible space with
>> > stupid avatars and inane sigs ... Try to find at a glance in a forum
>> > what (information) you want, as opposed to a newsgroup: an exercise in
>> > futility.
>>
>> No forums are much more useful for technical issues because they are
>> searchable using familiar tools.
>
> "familiar" is a subjective term. There are "familiar" searching tools
> for Usenet as well. That they may not be (as) "familar" to *you* is not
> relevant.
Oh yes? Where's the searchable archive? How far back does it go?
>> Formatting quotes and code snippets helps a lot too.
>
> And that can be done on Usenet as well. Just use the right newsreader
> or/and HTML if you must.
Now that's just silly!
Frank Slootweg
> On 2009-11-16, Frank Slootweg <th...@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
> > mechanic <mech...@example.com> wrote:
> >> On 2009-11-06, Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Forums, now, forums pretend at replacing usenet, and
> >> > a) they don't come close - they're just such a pain in the arse to use,
> >> > with no threading, no decent quoting, and wasting incredible space with
> >> > stupid avatars and inane sigs ... Try to find at a glance in a forum
> >> > what (information) you want, as opposed to a newsgroup: an exercise in
> >> > futility.
> >>
> >> No forums are much more useful for technical issues because they are
> >> searchable using familiar tools.
> >
> > "familiar" is a subjective term. There are "familiar" searching tools
> > for Usenet as well. That they may not be (as) "familar" to *you* is not
> > relevant.
>
> Oh yes? Where's the searchable archive? How far back does it go?
The archive is anywhere the archiver wants and it goes back as far as
the archiver wants it to go back.
Your wording (and tone) imply an apples-to-oranges comparison. You
compare a managed environment (the forum) with an environment which
*you* *assume* is unmanaged (Usenet). But there is no reason that a
Usenet environment can not be managed (and similarly a forum can be
un-managed).
> >> Formatting quotes and code snippets helps a lot too.
> >
> > And that can be done on Usenet as well. Just use the right newsreader
> > or/and HTML if you must.
>
> Now that's just silly!
Yes, it's silly that you're apparently ignorant in these matters and
still emit such statements in such a tone.
Beauregard T. Shagnasty
> Frank Slootweg <th...@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>> mechanic <mech...@example.com> wrote:
>>> No forums are much more useful for technical issues because they are
>>> searchable using familiar tools.
>>
>> "familiar" is a subjective term. There are "familiar" searching
>> tools for Usenet as well. That they may not be (as) "familar" to
>> *you* is not relevant.
>
> Oh yes? Where's the searchable archive? How far back does it go?
How far? Well, I do believe farther than the "age" of the World Wide
Web. Perhaps more than 10 years longer than the WWW (especially since
there wasn't much *on* the WWW until 'round 1995.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x10
If you have never found it,
http://groups.google.com/
--
-bts
-Friends don't let friends drive Windows
Frank Slootweg
Which says (slightly) over *18 years* [1].
For my articles, it's over 10 and a half years.
[1] Assuming it actually does what it is supposed to do, which is a rare
occurence these days.