[buug] El Blog del Narco

[Zeke Krahlin]

Quoting Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>:

> Only if you use a terrible, worthless NNTP service provider, e.g.,
> Google Groups ne DejaNews.  Which of course form the basis for most
> badly informed comments on the subject.

Definitely, standard news service remains the superior medium.  
Unfortunately, the majority of quality newsgroups have been wiped out  
by spammers, trolls and whatnot. I have new server access via my  
dialup service, and all the groups that I posted and read in the past,  
are useless.

But it's been a while since I've run a news client, and I should check  
out what groups of interest may indeed still be viable.

> The inherent technical problems with Web forums are pretty much fatal to
> intellectual content:  excruciatingly bad threading, effectively no
> killfile or scoring feature, and centralised control tending to
> reinforce a high degree of groupthink and social conformity.

You'd think forums like Slashdot would have worked this out by  
now...it's certainly not technologically impossible to build a  
web-based forum that resemble the efficiently of your old-school  
text-based BBS forums.

It has indeed been my frustration with posting to most web-based  
forums because of their overall kludginess.

But I was also thinking in terms of online communities...and where one  
can find reasonably active and large forums where you'd have the best  
chance of like minds reading your posts. And they *are* out  
there...you just need to sift through so many bad forums, to find the  
few good apples.

But you're right, web based forums have none of the efficiency of  
text-based ones that once ruled the day.

I know someone else still on dialup from home...an old SF friend who  
returned to his home town of Philly nine years ago...and he finally  
took my suggestion of dropping Netzero for his service, and switch to  
goct.net (the one I've been using for over five years now). Goct  
provides not just reliable dialup, but a news server for no extra  
charge, with tens of thousands of groups to pick from.

Unfortunately, he has no experience with Usenet, and is having trouble  
wrapping his mind around it. So it will be a while, before he realizes  
how useful newsgroups can be, for his cartooning skills, music  
interests, Linux, etc. Guess I'm still upset that most ISP's dropped  
Usenet as part of their standard (or any other) package.

During those times I used dialup w/o Usenet server access, I resorted  
to Dejanews...truly a headache and a half. Took at least 10 times  
longer to read and post, than via a text-based client. I gave up my  
preferred custom of reading lengthy threads, and pared down the number  
of groups I subscribed to.

Now that I have standard Usenet access again, things have changed for  
the worst, re. quality of the content. Still, I'm glad to have that  
access.

-- 
Zeke Krahlin
http://zekeblolg.wordpress.com

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