Loren Finkelstein (Loren@Finkelstein.Net) wrote:
> I am curious about your statement that many people aren't happy with usenet.
> Why?
In my experience, people on mailing lists are, as a rule, a friedlier lot
then the people who frequent newsgroups. Too much flame wars there, too
much trolls, and of course lots of spam. I've given up on newsgroups
completely because of that. Newsgroups are a relatively old concept (I've
been on the internet since 1990, and by that time, newsgroups were
already well established), and haven't improved much since then. Later I
discovered CompuServe and its forums, still the best model for an online
community in my view (I'm a bit prejudiced, though, as I've been the
primary sysop of a CompuServe forum for five years now), with mailing
lists being the next best thing.
> There are a couple of reasons to discuss this. If there is one resource
> that everyone uses, it is more efficient and reaches more people then
> several resources that split the users in to separate groups. Also,
> realistically, this mailing list isn't going to go away, but I believe the
> USENET newsgroups are a more efficient way of conducting this kind of
> communication.
I'm simply tired of this debate. On some mailing lists I'm on, every
couple of month someone suggests the list should be turned into a
newsgroups, for roughly the reasons you mentioned. When enough
subscribers have made clear that they are on the list for a reason, and
that they wish to keep the list as it is, the debate dies down. It's just
a fact that some people prefer newsgroups while others prefer mailing
lists, and it's really useless to try to convince them of the opposite.
Since I joined this list, the number of subscribers has been increasing,
which seems to imply that quite a number of people are happy with things
as they are (excessive quoting notwithstanding, which BTW is an even
greater problem on usenet).
Michael J. Hussmann
Redaktion macmagazin
Leverkusenstrasse 54 VII
D-22761 Hamburg
Germany
E-mail: michael@macmagazin.de
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 01 2000 - 06:50:09 CDT