Jumping ship...

[Lostgallifreyan]

I'm out. I think the decline in many Usenet groups has finally beaten me, so
I won't risk boring anyone with my attempts to ask or answer stuff here
anymore. I can stand watching paint dry, but watching something bleeding
slowly from its wrists is soul-sapping, really bad for morale. Maybe in a
month or so if I remember, I might check back to see if anyone answered with
some post showing where the action is now, but I suspect it's just fragmented
into forums all over the web that I can find for myself and sign up for if I
can stand the irritation. I used to like forums (in small numbers), but came
to Usenet because I found the signal to noise ratio high, but it looks now as
if the signal is dropping off completely at a time of year when it's usually
at a peak. The only posts in two days in this group seem to have been a
repeated dose of spam. That's par for the course in a minor extreme-
special-interest group, but s.e.c? That's just wrong. I think most people
just went silent and left without a word, but it's got so bad that maybe it's
time the rest of us marked its passing.

There's a certain critical mass of people needed to be active, like chunks of
stuff in a fission reactor. If that doesn't happen, no reaction results.
Pretty much sums up what's happening to Usenet. It's vast, but increasingly
empty. No-one hangs around in what feels like a cold damp corridor, waiting
for little or nothing to pass by, and I must be a glutton for punishment
because I persist in it. It's not doing me much good though, I'm going to go
where it's warmer and there's something interesting going on. I used to see
people bemoaning the decline of usenet, but I don't even see that anymore!
Got to be time I got the message, I must be one of the last to accept it.

 

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2010, Lostgallifreyan wrote:

I'm out. I think the decline in many Usenet groups has finally beaten me, so
I won't risk boring anyone with my attempts to ask or answer stuff here
anymore. I can stand watching paint dry, but watching something bleeding
slowly from its wrists is soul-sapping, really bad for morale. Maybe in a
month or so if I remember, I might check back to see if anyone answered with
some post showing where the action is now, but I suspect it's just fragmented
into forums all over the web that I can find for myself and sign up for if I
can stand the irritation. I used to like forums (in small numbers), but came
to Usenet because I found the signal to noise ratio high, but it looks now as
if the signal is dropping off completely at a time of year when it's usually
at a peak. The only posts in two days in this group seem to have been a
repeated dose of spam. That's par for the course in a minor extreme-
special-interest group, but s.e.c? That's just wrong. I think most people
just went silent and left without a word, but it's got so bad that maybe it's
time the rest of us marked its passing.

First, you are just like everyone else who left. The problem isn't here,

the problem is that people have left or aren't coming. You are the
problem, not a reaction.

Second, sci.electronics.components has never seen much traffic. The Big
Split back in 96, or was it 95?, was because people thought there was too
much traffic. I read sci.electronics with a 1200baud modem initially, I
guess it was up to 2400 when the split happened. The traffic never seemed
that bad.

But once the split, it didn't divide up the traffic, it left some groups
that saw traffic, and then some that didn't. You can go back even a
decade, and much of the traffic here was a result of someone posting
crossposting from one of the other newsgroups in the hierarchy.

If you want to get fussy, go after .design that's too long been a hangout,
but because of all the junk traffic, people post there "because it's the
busiest", which then leaves the often more appropriate .basics empty and
this one too. Go after .repair that has become a more general newsgroup,
not enough influx of new, too many people there too long (and oddly, newer
than when I first started reading it back in 1994). They are getting lots
of posts "because it's busy", and they don't care about the hierarchy,
they only like their hangout.

Once nobody was using .components much, it became fairly easy to see that
it wasn't such a good breakdown. A beginner wanting to know about a
component is not the same thing as someone designing something and needing
a component. But that's the same thing as a beginner not being in the
same place as a designer.

Michael

 

[George Herold]

On Dec 12, 3:10 pm, Lostgallifreyan <no-...@nowhere.net> wrote:

I'm out. I think the decline in many Usenet groups has finally beaten me, so
I won't risk boring anyone with my attempts to ask or answer stuff here
anymore. I can stand watching paint dry, but watching something bleeding
slowly from its wrists is soul-sapping, really bad for morale. Maybe in a
month or so if I remember, I might check back to see if anyone answered with
some post showing where the action is now, but I suspect it's just fragmented
into forums all over the web that I can find for myself and sign up for if I
can stand the irritation. I used to like forums (in small numbers), but came
to Usenet because I found the signal to noise ratio high, but it looks now as
if the signal is dropping off completely at a time of year when it's usually
at a peak. The only posts in two days in this group seem to have been a
repeated dose of spam. That's par for the course in a minor extreme-
special-interest group, but s.e.c? That's just wrong. I think most people
just went silent and left without a word, but it's got so bad that maybe it's
time the rest of us marked its passing.

There's a certain critical mass of people needed to be active, like chunks of
stuff in a fission reactor. If that doesn't happen, no reaction results.
Pretty much sums up what's happening to Usenet. It's vast, but increasingly
empty. No-one hangs around in what feels like a cold damp corridor, waiting
for little or nothing to pass by, and I must be a glutton for punishment
because I persist in it. It's not doing me much good though, I'm going to go
where it's warmer and there's something interesting going on. I used to see
people bemoaning the decline of usenet, but I don't even see that anymore!
Got to be time I got the message, I must be one of the last to accept it.

I only discovered usenet a few years ago, so all the spam and not many
threads seems 'normal' to me. I think the big problem is no new
blood. The world has moved on to other things.

George H.