Book newsgroups dying?
Steve Hayes
interests by means of Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Now many ISPs are
withdrawing their news service (it does require rather a lot of server space)
and so traffic in the newsgroups has dropped off a lot, and I've lost contact
with a lot of the people with whom I used to have interesting conversations in
the newsgroups.
I've found an alternative way of keeping in contact, through Good Reads, where
you can find me at http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw. But more on that later
(see below).
You can also read a slightly more detailed version of this post on my blog at:
http://methodius.blogspot.com/2009/06/books-and-reading.html
where there are more clickable links.
For those who have suffered the fate of losing access to newsgroups, there is
a free news server at http://news.eternal-september.org where you can
subscribe to the various newsgroups.
My favourite newsgroups for books and reading are:
* alt.books.cs-lewis
* alt.books.inklings
* alt.books.beatgeneration
* rec.arts.books.tolkien
The Tolkien group still thrives, but the others have almost emptied of
participants since some of the major ISPs stopped their nntp service.
There are also other newsgroups that are (or were) useful for those who like
books and reading:
* rec.arts.books
* rec.arts.books.childrens
* alt.usage.english
Most of the better-informed participants in rec.arts.books took themselves off
to a Facebook group called The Prancing Half-Wits, but the Facebook interface
is clunky, and does not lend itself to interactive discussions the way
newsgroups do. alt.usage.english continues to thrive, perhaps because many of
the participants are a bit more computer-savvy than most, and know how to
connect to alternative news sources.
For those interested in the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R.
Tolkien & Co) I've started a mailing list called Neo-Inklings, which you can
find at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eldil/. To subscribe to it, send e-mail
to eldil-s...@yahoogroups.com, but it is worth also visiting the web
site, as there are facilities for uploading files and photos, creating polls
and databases and more. I've invited some of the former members of the
alt.books.cs-lewis newsgroup to join us there. For those interested mainly in
the works of Charles Williams rather than the other Inklings, there is a
Charles Williams list called Coinherence-L.
There are also several web sites for book lovers to keep track of their books
and make contact with others with similar interests. Three of the best-known
are Bibliophil, LibraryThing and Good Reads. For various reasons I prefer Good
Reads.
Good Reads
GoodReads is a combination of a book catalogue and a social networking site
for books, and I think it works better than the others.
Like most social networking sites, you can add people as "friends", but in
many social networks this is rendered useless by people wanting to add you as
a "friend" when they don't know you, don't want to know you, share no common
interests with you and you've never heard of them. It's a bit like regarding
everyone in the phone book as a "friend" -- if everyone is your friend, then
no one is.
But Good Reads provides a good way of seeing whether someone is likely to be
your friend.
First you need to join, and enter some of the books that you have in your
library or have read, starting with your favourites, but you can also add a
few books that you really hate. Like other such sites, you are asked to rate
and review them. When you've entered those books and rated them (with 1-5
stars), then you can look for friends. Find someone who owns some of your
favourite books, look at their profile and click "compare books".
There you can see if they've read your favourite books, and what they think of
them. It's expressed as a percentage. For example, with one of my friends (who
sometimes reads my blog), it produced this result:
You and booklady have 21 books (or 7.27% of your library and 2.07% of her
library) in common. Your tastes for those 21 ratings are 78% similar.
If it's over 70%, go to the next step, which is the "book compatibility test".
This compares your ratings of some popular books in various genres, or if
you've even read them. In this case my result was "Your compatibility with
booklady is 63%."
If you have read some of those popular books, but haven't entered them and
rated them, then do so, because it will make future comparisons easier.
So Good Reads is a good way to find and keep in touch with those with similar
literary tastes.
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
Steuard Jensen
> For those who have suffered the fate of losing access to newsgroups,
> there is a free news server at http://news.eternal-september.org
> where you can subscribe to the various newsgroups.
Thank you! I've been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable
replacement for my ISP's news server out there; this looks quite
promising. (It will look even more promising if this message posts
properly and propagates to the world at large.) I may end up
recommending it to people who are looking for a way to participate
here.
Anyone else out there have good suggestions for free news servers that
carry these groups? (I'd say "free or inexpensive", but I suspect
that when trying to attract newcomers to the groups it will be a lot
easier to get them to try out "free".)
Steuard Jensen
Miles Bader
> Anyone else out there have good suggestions for free news servers that
> carry these groups? (I'd say "free or inexpensive", but I suspect
> that when trying to attract newcomers to the groups it will be a lot
> easier to get them to try out "free".)
FWIW, I switched to news.individual.net -- 10 euro/year -- when my ISP
dropped its netnews service.
It has the advantage of reliability, wide coverage, and pretty much zero spam.
I first tried some of the more widely known free servers, but never
found anything very reliable.
-Miles
--
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On 2009-06-26, Steve Hayes <haye...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> For those who have suffered the fate of losing access to newsgroups,
>> there is a free news server at http://news.eternal-september.org
>> where you can subscribe to the various newsgroups.
>
>Thank you! I've been trying to figure out if there was a reasonable
>replacement for my ISP's news server out there; this looks quite
>promising. (It will look even more promising if this message posts
>properly and propagates to the world at large.) I may end up
>recommending it to people who are looking for a way to participate
>here.
I've been using it and its predecessor Motzarella for several months now, and
it works better than my ISP's news server did.
Unfortunately it seems to have come too late and some of the newsgroups
devoted to books and reading seem to have dropped below critical mass.
Peter Ceresole
> FWIW, I switched to news.individual.net -- 10 euro/year -- when my ISP
> dropped its netnews service.
>
> It has the advantage of reliability, wide coverage, and pretty much zero spam.
Definitely- I second that. NIN is excellent.
--
Peter
Jack Campin - bogus address
> carry these groups? (I'd say "free or inexpensive", but I suspect
> that when trying to attract newcomers to the groups it will be a lot
> easier to get them to try out "free".)
I'm using albasani, which has never given me any problems.
I was using aioe.org before that - they went offline for a while
(due to a flood, I think) but apparently they're back again and
working well.
I think I killfile eternal-september for almost all newsgroups -
as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === <http://www.campin.me.uk> ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******
Patok
>> Anyone else out there have good suggestions for free news servers that
>> carry these groups? (I'd say "free or inexpensive", but I suspect
>> that when trying to attract newcomers to the groups it will be a lot
>> easier to get them to try out "free".)
>
> I'm using albasani, which has never given me any problems.
>
> I was using aioe.org before that - they went offline for a while
> (due to a flood, I think) but apparently they're back again and
> working well.
>
> I think I killfile eternal-september for almost all newsgroups -
> as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
> for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've seen coming from a supposedly
'normal' (non-troll) poster. There is no specific server for spammers
and trolls, and if any tends to be, it's Google groups.
Do you even know what eternal September is?
--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
Steve Hayes
<bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Anyone else out there have good suggestions for free news servers that
>> carry these groups? (I'd say "free or inexpensive", but I suspect
>> that when trying to attract newcomers to the groups it will be a lot
>> easier to get them to try out "free".)
>
>I'm using albasani, which has never given me any problems.
>
>I was using aioe.org before that - they went offline for a while
>(due to a flood, I think) but apparently they're back again and
>working well.
>
>I think I killfile eternal-september for almost all newsgroups -
>as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
>for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
Ah well, then you won't see this.
Perhaps I should killfile albasini, since the name suggests that it was set up
specifically for scammers and phishers, by the Mafia.
Peter Ceresole
> On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:37:34 +0100, Jack Campin - bogus address
> <bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >I think I killfile eternal-september for almost all newsgroups -
> >as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
> >for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
>
> Ah well, then you won't see this.
>
> Perhaps I should killfile albasini, since the name suggests that it was set up
> specifically for scammers and phishers, by the Mafia.
Boys! Boys!
Criminality, yet? How about if it was set up by Dick Cheney?
--
Peter
Jack Campin - bogus address
>> as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
>> for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
> That's the most ridiculous thing I've seen coming from a supposedly
> 'normal' (non-troll) poster. There is no specific server for spammers
> and trolls, and if any tends to be, it's Google groups.
You forgot about nym.alias.net at MIT and the Danish anonymizer at
tele.dk.
> Do you even know what eternal September is?
The allusion is to what used to happen on Usenet when American
universities got a new influx of freshmen in September - they'd
deluge groups with all sorts of ignorant egocentric crap. Once
AOL joined Usenet we instantly got a continuous stream of posters
like that, hence the phrase "eternal September" for what Usenet
turned into. (Though in fact AOL's Usenet honcho, whose name
I forget, deserves credit for taking a responsible and constructive
attitude to problems he could see coming and the rest of us mostly
didn't - it would have been a lot worse without his personal effort).
I have seen far too many Usenet abusers posting from eternal-september
(mainly American far-right nutcases and bullying trolls) to think it's
concidence. Abuse goes unchecked there.
Jim Kalb
>>> I think I killfile eternal-september for almost all newsgroups -
>>> as the name suggests it was set up specifically to be a server
>>> for spammers and trolls, and it does what it says on the tin.
>> That's the most ridiculous thing I've seen coming from a supposedly
>> 'normal' (non-troll) poster. There is no specific server for spammers
>> and trolls, and if any tends to be, it's Google groups.
>> Do you even know what eternal September is?
>
> The allusion is to what used to happen on Usenet when American
> universities got a new influx of freshmen in September - they'd
> deluge groups with all sorts of ignorant egocentric crap. Once
> AOL joined Usenet we instantly got a continuous stream of posters
> like that, hence the phrase "eternal September" for what Usenet
> turned into. (Though in fact AOL's Usenet honcho, whose name
> I forget, deserves credit for taking a responsible and constructive
> attitude to problems he could see coming and the rest of us mostly
> didn't - it would have been a lot worse without his personal effort).
>
> I have seen far too many Usenet abusers posting from eternal-september
> (mainly American far-right nutcases and bullying trolls) to think it's
> concidence. Abuse goes unchecked there.
This is very odd. Motzarella.org, a well-known free usenet
provider, is changing its servers to eternal-september.org. The
change has been underway for maybe a week and the old
motzarella.org address is scheduled to go away July 1. I had a
motazarella.org account which I changed over when the announcement
was made, and I'm posting through the new address.
How does Mr. Campin's story of (apparently) longstanding abuse at
eternal-september.org fit into all that?
--
Jim Kalb
http://jimkalb.com
Öjevind Lång
news:1j25yyk.1aqlzitzvksc3N%pe...@cara.demon.co.uk...
I third it. It's excellent.Very cheap at the price.
�jevind
Steve Hayes
wrote:
Though "eternal-september" seems an odd name, it makes me think of spring
flowers, but I don't see what the *name* of a server says about how well it
works. But if one is going to go by the name, the Joao Albasini was a rather
unsavoury, if not criminal character in history.
I started using Mozarella when someone recommended it and my ISPs news server
was getting unreliable. It's worked pretty well, and so when it changed to
eternal-september a couple of weeks ago, I switched to that, and it still
works well, with far less down time than my ISP's server.
Peter Ceresole
> Though "eternal-september" seems an odd name, it makes me think of spring
> flowers, but I don't see what the *name* of a server says about how well it
> works.
But it says plenty about the sense of humour of the people who named it.
In this case, plenty that's good...
--
Peter
Patok
Exactly. I think there may be some case of mistaken identity at
play here. Motzarella (and now eternal-september) are quite good at
fighting real spam. As to abusive nutcases - they are more likely to
post through aioe, as it requires no registration.
Dan Clore
I fourth it. It's what I use.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"