Since this is not "r.g.r.n.j" I changed the subject and tagged it as
meta[*] discussion. And with my longish rant I'll also drag the post
at its end a bit into the, less meta, more RGRN direction.
On 23.12.2023 08:18, RecRanger wrote:
From Google:
Effective February 22, 2024, Google Groups will no longer support new
Usenet content. Posting and subscribing will be disallowed, and new
content from Usenet peers will not appear. Viewing and searching of historical data will still be supported as it is done today.
Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google Groups
(at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups, subscribe to
Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content. You can continue to view
and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22,
2024 on Google Groups.
In addition, Google’s Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server
and associated peering will no longer be available, meaning Google
will not support serving new Usenet content or exchanging content
with other NNTP servers.
--
The end of an era?
I think this question is not fully hitting the area. My observations
on Usenet, RGRN, Google, just briefly (by content), yet still a bit
longish (by number of lines)...
Yes, I think an era changed its face. But Usenet was existing before
Google appeared. It had already changed; when Google occupied Usenet
for the good (it got wider prominence or at least wider distribution
and it provided the feature to search the archives), and for the bad
(many folks couldn't distinguish Google based Usenet groups from
other web based forums, so that -e.g.- sensible Usenet conventions
eroded, and with the larger audience also quality suffered, partly).
Personally I'm glad that Google's process of Usenet assimilation is
[at the moment] history (sort of); but history (naturally) changes.
With Google there also came a lot of Spam, and Google obviously did
not care (or did not care enough) about that annoyance for users. To
be honest, I don't exactly recall the 1990's (when I started to use
Usenet) but I think there was also Spam in Usenet, but certainly not
to the degree that we observed later when Google joined the newsgroup
area. It's good that the search capabilities will survive; but for
how long? Commercial services will follow their own agenda and don't
care much about the communities' demands (unless it serves their own
goals). Even ISPs that get paid by their customers for their services
just shut down their Usenet servers and services; been there twice.
(Now I use a free Usenet service; but how long will it persist?)
Newsgroup's qualities also vary, depending on the contributing folks.
That was true before, during, and after the Google era.[**] Though a
lot of folks left RGRN, even regulars[***]. There were some technical circumstances that fostered the outflux. Web based forums appeared,
maintainers of these forums advertised them, some badmouthed Usenet
(even someone who later became a Devteam member, one of the more
recent; not sure he's still active). Also chat systems dragged some
folks away from Usenet; for interactive help on a Nethack game chat
systems have advantages, and they also serve the attention span of
our modern times better. Finally, the long hibernation period of the
Nethack development (after NH343 was released) contributed, I think,
to the loss of interest. More variants spread and split the players.
The cohesion effect of the rogue-like flag-ship Nethack vanished.
As Heraclitus said: "πάντα ῥεῖ" ("Panta rhei"; "everything flows").
As a personal ending of this post I want to note that I'm also not
any more looking into this newsgroup as intensive as I've done in the
past - if the original subject would not have had my name mentioned
I'd have missed it. Though not Google, its presence or absence, is
the reason for that. Diversification of (non-coherent) variants, the
shrinking community, sometimes the quality of the posts, sometimes
the tone of the discussions. There's also not any more the focus on
an/the (IMO) historically exceptional game that gets discussed; new
versions appear and not the least discussion about it takes place
(at least not here in RGRN). I am thinking back at times when RGRN
had tons of on-topic posts regularly and dozens of regular posters.
*That* era - to close the circle to the original question - certainly
had ended, and it has (or rather had) more impact on this newsgroup
than Google's actual policies.
Janis
[*] Too bad that one of the Big Five hijacked the word "meta", as the
others have done with other common, previously generally used words.
[**] I recall a poster that came newly to RGRN (around the mid 2000's
saying something like "What a polite newsgroup RGRN is. My experiences
with other newsgroups were really bad in that respect."
[***] The one (only one) I can identify to be still here is Pat Rankin
(since long part of the DevTeam); I seem to recall email exchanges in
the end of the 1980's (concerning an Atari port) and early 1990's for
support on AIX. But memories are faint.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)