scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> In the end I just gave up, the groups I frequented died out as people moved 
> to web-based forums

  Why do people do that?

  With usenet you don't need any accounts and passwords, and you can
subscribe to "forums" with any topic in existence, and use them all
with the same program without having to jump between any web pages.

  With web-based forums you have numerous completely different forums
with different addresses, you need an account and password for each one
of them.

  Every time you need to ask a question about a topic you have never
before dealt with (eg. about some new program you are trying), you can
simply search for the proper usenet group and ask there. No hassle, no
creating accounts, no confirming emails. Just go there and ask. It's
that simple. With web-based forums you always have to go through the
hassle of creating a new account for that one single question you had.

  Also there probably exist about one thousand *different* web-based
forums related to a specific topic (the more the topic is popular).
Which one are you going to choose? In usenet there's usually one or two
popular groups for a specific topic, and everyone in the world will
participate in them.

  For example, comp.lang.c++ is a rather active group where you can
actually get some real help if you have some problem about the language,
and where you can help others, ask questions, and so on. Which web-based
forum would be equivalent to that? I'm sure there are quite many of them,
most of them with something like 5 users. Which one would be the best
alternative to comp.lang.c++?

  This trend of everything going to WWW just sucks. Most internet users
don't actually know that there's something *else* than WWW out there.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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