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  • Once upon a time

    From Bertietaylor@21:1/5 to All on Fri Dec 13 14:23:12 2024
    Once upon a time say 30 years ago this newsgroup was illustrious!
    How things change.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to Bertietaylor on Sat Dec 14 05:06:02 2024
    XPost: alt.books, rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.reviews

    On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:23:12 +0000, [email protected]
    (Bertietaylor) wrote:

    Once upon a time say 30 years ago this newsgroup was illustrious!
    How things change.


    That was because about half the members, misguidedly thinking that
    "newer is better", decided to migrate to Facebook, where they called
    themselves "The Prancing Halfwits".

    There they fell foul of the Facebook design, where it is difficult, if
    not impossible, to follow threads and replies, since they are
    displayed out of order, if they are displayed at all, and the whole
    thing died of inanition.

    I still occasionally see posts from Paul Ilechko over there, but none
    of the others.

    And without the input of those who left, this forum lost critical
    mass, and so there's little worth seeing here nowadays either.

    There are also quite a number of alt ngs, some devoted to individual
    authors, which have little or no traffic. Perhaps if people who posted
    in those also crossposted to rec.arts.books we might see something of
    a revival, but I doubt if there are enough people left around Usenet
    even to do that.




    --
    Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon
    Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935
    Web site: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
    Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
    E-mail: [email protected] or if you use Gmail [email protected]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bertietaylor@21:1/5 to Steve Hayes on Sat Dec 14 14:48:32 2024
    On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 3:06:02 +0000, Steve Hayes wrote:

    On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:23:12 +0000, [email protected]
    (Bertietaylor) wrote:

    Once upon a time say 30 years ago this newsgroup was illustrious!
    How things change.


    That was because about half the members, misguidedly thinking that
    "newer is better", decided to migrate to Facebook, where they called themselves "The Prancing Halfwits".

    They were upset by the posts of 3 designated trolls.

    There they fell foul of the Facebook design, where it is difficult, if
    not impossible, to follow threads and replies, since they are
    displayed out of order, if they are displayed at all, and the whole
    thing died of inanition.

    Or they died out of boredom of old age and did not get replaced.

    I still occasionally see posts from Paul Ilechko over there, but none
    of the others.

    And without the input of those who left, this forum lost critical
    mass, and so there's little worth seeing here nowadays either.

    No way to do research in past posts without google groups.
    Usenet is a keen area for ai programming. For making robots look smart
    with canned answers.

    There are also quite a number of alt ngs, some devoted to individual
    authors, which have little or no traffic. Perhaps if people who posted
    in those also crossposted to rec.arts.books we might see something of
    a revival, but I doubt if there are enough people left around Usenet
    even to do that.

    Robots should be welcome. Interesting if they learnt to abuse each other
    as was the custom




    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Pluted Pup@21:1/5 to Bertietaylor on Sat Dec 14 16:53:37 2024
    On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 06:23:12 -0800, Bertietaylor wrote:

    Once upon a time say 30 years ago this newsgroup was illustrious!
    How things change.

    And at the time, did they actually say anything, or just
    sit around saying "my, what a beautiful newsgroup!"

    If you got something bright to say, say it, what
    are you waiting for?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bertietaylor@21:1/5 to Pluted Pup on Sun Dec 15 01:34:22 2024
    On Sun, 15 Dec 2024 0:53:37 +0000, Pluted Pup wrote:

    On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 06:23:12 -0800, Bertietaylor wrote:

    Once upon a time say 30 years ago this newsgroup was illustrious!
    How things change.

    And at the time, did they actually say anything, or just
    sit around saying "my, what a beautiful newsgroup!"


    They said what they liked.

    If you got something bright to say, say it, what
    are you waiting for?

    An audience that could pay.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)