Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / July 2008

Usenet is becoming less and less a priority and might or might not be
"deteriorating," as only time can be certain. Some accounts will grab the
newsgroukps you want if you ask them too; they don't carry all of them,
most are never used by anyone. But you gotta get on the phone with someone
and ask.

After years of usenet abuses of all kinds serious posters have tended to
vanish into more controllable venues with far fewer trolls, flamers,
spammers, pornographers, and rank turds. An example was the pet skunks
newsgroup. So many people went in the group to make light of the whole
notion of pet skunks that a dynamic group gave it to the trolls, and then
the trolls had no one to pick on and even they went away. Another group
was pizza delivery guys and gals. It was a great group, very smart in a
lot of ways, but the trolls were attracted to the whole idea of actual
pizza delivery people talking about their jobs with wit and intelligence,
and decided to they'd harrass committed members of the newsgroup
endlessly. Now there's a members-only subcribed group for the same people.
There are dozens like that, once thrilling and open to everyone, but
pulled down mostly by lonely pathetic men whose only chance at feeling
powerful is to wreck stuff from their cowardly distance at their computers
in their mothers' basements.

There are presently scores nay hundreds of newsgroups that were once very
dynamic and thrilling -- even the flamers were clever -- but are now
entirely unused (one or two posts a MONTH that aren't spams and those who
pop in to ask "Why is this great topic not attracting any posters?"
sometimes getting an answer about where the subscribable group everyone
fled to). Others are taken over by trolls who never address the original
topic, so they look used, but not by anyone you'd want to know.

As valued users become fewer, ISPs have less inclination to waste their
effort providing access to something fewer and fewer of their costomers
want. I'll be sad if usenet does die a long lingering death with spottier
and spottier access-coverage, and somehow I think the disuse of so many
groups is just a moment in history and will change again.

rec.gardens continues to be pretty interesting but it's one of the
rarities. I can imagine a "clean-up" of the longest disused groups
sometime in the future and the ones still active for more than
troublemaking will again appear to be dominant.

No one really needs binaries groups though, and it really has been a
sicko-attractant because historically it was not policed. Most web
accounts provide at least a small amount of web space for a personal
webpage, and whoever doesn't use the space they're paying for anyhow, they
can always just have a free page at any number of picture-carrying
websites, from a yahoo free website, to a free membership myspace sort of
site that tries to weed out soem of the genuine nutters.

Anyone fond of the binaries groups I assume will still have access through
sites like newsgroups-binaries.com which charge a small monthly fee. But
really, who needs 'em.

-paghat the ratgirl

Get used to it....it's a Brave New World.  Like Kunstler says, we have
become a Wile E. Coyote nation.  Event horizon.  Look around.

Charlie

"It is better that one should suffer than that many should be
corrupted."   -- Chapter 10  "Brave New World"  ~~Alduous Huxley

'Phisherman[_1_ Wrote:

Hi,

I setup a membership with a dedicated newsgroup service a couple o
years ago, and with this arrangement I'll always have access to th
groups from any Internet / ISP connection I may have.

I've found Newsguy.com to be a reliable newsgroup provider, and the
have memberships as low as $3 month. They're also offering a free mont
of newsgroup access to AT&T / Bell customer
(http://newsguy.com/freemonth.htm)

Vinc

--
vincent510