[buug] El Blog del Narco

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Zeke Krahlin (ezekielk at goct.net):

> Quoting Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>:
> 
> >You probably need a better news feed.
> 
> I don't think so; I've tried some commercial ones. 

For example?

> Even when most of
> the trash and spam are snipped away, on many formerly useful
> newsgroups, what relevant posts remain, are quite scant. Not like
> the old days. Of course, *some* newsgroups remain that are worth
> one's time...but that is a relative handful compared to the total
> number of groups available.

That much, I'll certainly agree with.  However, all it takes is a couple
of worthwhile groups to make Usenet worthwhile.  The existence of
several thousand others that don't interest you is rather beside the
point.

> And they saw *to* it that Usenet would never be trendy, by so
> quickly eliminating that option. Google saw it's value: still does,
> at the cost of new users never knowing what Usenet really was, and
> should be...and having to put up with phenomenally awkward browsing
> and posting.

I honestly don't know what Google thought they were going to do with
DejaNews.  Possibly, they didn't, either -- which would account for how
it was quickly sidelined in favour of Google's own groups.

> I was also a sysop of several boards during that era...not
> simultaneously, mind you.

Er, by 'sysop', you do _not_ mean 'person who constructed, owned, and
administered the system', right?  You mean something like 'nanny for a
message section on someone else's BBS', I'd guess.

I knew all of the BBS sysops in the Bay Area, and you weren't one of
them.  Of course, you could have been elsewhere, of course -- but, if
you'll pardon my being a bit blunt, I'd be really, really surprised if
you had the technical knowledge to run them, let alone build them.  If
you nonetheless say you put together BBSses, and did so multiple times,
then I believe you, but I'm surprised.

When I say I was a longtime BBS sysop, I refer to The Skeptic's Board,
which I constructed, funded, owned, and administered for about six
years.  It was BinkleyTerm with several FTN memberships, RBBS-PC for the
main software, Tim Pozar's Fidogate to communicate directly with Usenet
and SMTP, and a whole bunch of other software kludged in.  

> >In any event, Web forums have all of the cited inherent techological
> >drawbacks.  Plus, they tend to have very low Web-search rank, plus they
> >make it gratuitously difficult to preserve an independent copy of one's
> >postings for reference and archival purposes[1].
> 
> That is most certainly not true in every case. 

Thus the term 'tend', which you seem to have missed.


> The are some very large and successful forums such as Alternet.org and
> Ubuntu Forums, where I often find my search results pointing to their
> boards (political topics for the former, and of course Linux topics
> for the latter).

Ubuntu Forums is an _excellent_ place to get bad recommendations.
It's one of my current poster-children examples for what is wrong with
Web forums.  http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug/2010-May/033353.html

> There are numerous other highly successful web forums out
> there, I know of them, and such forums are easy enough to track down
> via a simple search.

Obviously:  Your unstated criteria for 'successful' probably neatly
ignore my points, given your example of ubuntuforums.org.

> Plus, one can always save one's posts (and that of anyone else) in
> his own text file or database. Which is what I do.

You are again choosing to ignore my point:  You _can_ go out of your way
to do so, but it's kludgy and gratuitous work, whereas with better
media, it's automatic.

> But in a backdoor way, you've affirmed the thesis of my original
> post: that is one wants the best chance of having his voice hear in
> a public venue, use the Internet, and find the most popular ones
> know for their thoughtful and intelligent posts.

You can take those two phrases, 'most popular' and 'known for their
thoughtful and intelligent posts' and grind flour with them.  

> Usenet just doesn't cut it any more. 

'Most popular', no.  Too many cruddy ISPs can't be bothered to 
properly run NNTP servers, nor pay services like Supernews for their
customers' access.  Also, ISPs and everyone else make a whole lot more
money off the Web, which is much more friendly to advertising,
data-mining, and other spying on the users and selling their private
data.


> You are aware of course that many Usenet denizens use fake email
> addies. But I guess pointing that out wouldn't make your argument
> appear so solid.

Once again, you are going out of your way to ignore my point:  In Web
forums, there is not even a provision for a real contact method, nor
a convention that there's a place where a real name is _supposed_ to go
(the GECOS field).  Thus, the only way you can provide same on a Web
forum is to go to explicit, personally initiated extra steps to provide
one, e.g., the real name and real e-mail address I make a point of
including at the bottom of every post.

The _ability_ to use fake personal data in GECOS fields on Usenet (like
pretty much everywhere else) is irrelevant to my point.


> In conclusion: I would never dream of steering someone who seeks a
> voice, to Usenet exclusively, or even more than a secondary
> resource.

Good.  Send 'em to blogs and podcasts.  Thank you for helping reduce
the noise level on Usenet.  ;-> 

-- 
Cheers,        "One of the reasons it takes such a long time to make a picture 
Rick Moen      like 'Jaws' is because it's not the time it takes to take the 
rick at linux     take that takes the time; it's the time it takes between takes 
mafia.com      that takes the time that takes the takes."      -- Roy Scheider