Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > 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?

> Because for ISPs, newsgroups are a cost, whereas for forums, they're either 
> Not My Problem if it's on someone else's server, or a source of revenue if 
> it's ad-supported, or you paying for only exactly the forums you want otherwise.

  I didn't ask why ISPs are dropping support. I asked why people are moving
from a more versatile medium to a more restricted one.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp schrieb:

>> 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?

I'd guess it's primarily not so much an issue of people actively 
/moving/ from usenet to web-based forums, but rather /new/ folks never 
moving to usenet in the first place (heck, who of the newest generation 
of internet users /knows/ about usenet anyway?), and nobody replenishing 
the user base of usenet. So it's "Fading away".

>   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.

Exactly. But for them it doesn't suck, because they don't know better.

There's also some benefit to it, too: You don't need different 
/software/ to access it. All you need is your web browser.

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Neeum Zawan schrieb:

>     The best system I ever worked with was the various BBS networks 
> (Fidonet, etc). Much better than USENET, much better than web groups, 
> much better than mailing lists...

Ah, good old Fight-o-Net... yeah, those were the days!

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> There's also some benefit to it, too: You don't need different 
> /software/ to access it. All you need is your web browser.

  Not much help, given that most forums are rather different from other
forums, so there really isn't so much difference from using different
programs.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:16:13 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>> > 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?
> 
>> Because for ISPs, newsgroups are a cost, whereas for forums, they're
>> either Not My Problem if it's on someone else's server, or a source of
>> revenue if it's ad-supported, or you paying for only exactly the forums
>> you want otherwise.
> 
>   I didn't ask why ISPs are dropping support. I asked why people are
>   moving
> from a more versatile medium to a more restricted one.

Which is the question I answered. :-)

Jim

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Warp wrote:
>   I didn't ask why ISPs are dropping support. I asked why people are moving
> from a more versatile medium to a more restricted one.

Same reason.

1) ISPs are dropping support. There aren't many mediums that are less 
versatile than a newsgroup server that isn't running.

2) People starting new newsgroups or who think they have information of 
value don't start it on a newsgroup server, but on a web server where they 
can monetize it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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scott wrote:
> 4) Moderators often move, merge or delete threads that are put in the 
> wrong place, or ask already-asked questions.  This makes 
> searching/browsing much easier

Unless you find it via google and the only answer is "I moved this into the 
proper forum" without any indication of what the proper forum is or where it 
linked to.

>>  With usenet you don't need any accounts and passwords,
> Which means lots of spam.

Not really. It used to be that there was a lot of spam, then someone wrote 
code to cancel spam based on how often and how widely it had been posted 
(i.e., regardless of content). Then someone took that and abused it to 
silence people they didn't like. Then ISPs stopped paying attention to 
cancel messages due to that, and the spam came back.

> And then be told to read the group's FAQ (how are you meant to know 
> where that is beforehand?) 

Because it's cached on the server, just like in a forum. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:18:42 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Unless you find it via google and the only answer is "I moved this into
> the proper forum" without any indication of what the proper forum is or
> where it linked to.

Most modern web-based forum software doesn't leave a pointer, it just 
moves the message to the new forum.  vBulletin and FUDForum both handle 
it that way.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:18:42 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Unless you find it via google and the only answer is "I moved this into
>> the proper forum" without any indication of what the proper forum is or
>> where it linked to.
> 
> Most modern web-based forum software doesn't leave a pointer, it just 
> moves the message to the new forum. 

Well, yes, and therein lies the problem. I've seen this happen dozens of 
times. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:51:33 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:18:42 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> Unless you find it via google and the only answer is "I moved this
>>> into the proper forum" without any indication of what the proper forum
>>> is or where it linked to.
>> 
>> Most modern web-based forum software doesn't leave a pointer, it just
>> moves the message to the new forum.
> 
> Well, yes, and therein lies the problem. I've seen this happen dozens of
> times. :-)

It's not really a problem, though - the result is found in the new 
location unless it took a long time for someone to decide to move it.  
Generally (in my experience) moves happen very quickly.

Not saying it doesn't happen, but that "dozens of times" out of "millions 
of messages" is statistically small.

Jim

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