XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   Steuard Jensen  spoke these staves:   
   >   
      
      
      
   > I get the impression that this message will still show up to the   
   > outside world, though:   
      
      
      
   > the problem is just on the receiving end.  (Right?)   
      
   My response will (unless someone beats me to it) be, counting on   
   news.individual.net the seventh direct answer and the twelfth answer   
   in the subthread generated by your post.   
      
   > I'm honestly not sure how many more steps like this our   
   > communities can survive.  As we've discussed a bit lately, for the   
   > past few years there's been almost no "new blood" showing up to   
   > replace people who drift away.  Even if the most dedicated of us   
   > find and pay for Usenet access, and even if we put real effort   
   > into revitalizing the groups and making them more active again, at   
   > best it seems like we'll have established a private club for   
   > ourselves rather than the vibrant ecosystem of personalities and   
   > ideas that we once had.  (I suppose we could make some effort at   
   > publicizing and using the Google Groups interface, but it's /so/   
   > frustrating compared to a real newsreader.  And they've been   
   > having pretty serious issues of their own lately, too.)   
      
   Yes, I, too, think this is the main problem -- how to attract new   
   people.   
      
   Whenever I discuss Tolkien matters elsewhere on the net, I make an   
   effort to emphasize the newsgroups, but I doubt that it has much   
   effect ;-)   
      
   In Google RABT has 485 subscribers and AFT 314, which are more than   
   are regularly posting here, so there must be some lurkers (please   
   post -- I'm sure you have something valuable to add!).   
      
   It seems likely to me that most people who discover usenet these days   
   do so by way of Google Groups. If that is so, I think it is a problem   
   that Google doesn't do any spam filtering -- everything appears on   
   Google, and the spam threads (even though they're just one message   
   'deep') appear to be a high fraction of the traffic (12 of the 30   
   latest AFT-threads on Google are spam threads, and of the remaining   
   18 something like another 12 are in-jokes, meta-threads etc.).   
      
   I do wonder if Morgoth's Curse is right -- that we are already a   
   private club? And if so, I wonder even more if that is irreversible?   
      
   > That being said, I for one do not want to see the community here   
   > vanish.   
   [...]   
      
   Hear! Hear!   
      
   I too am willing to go rather far to maintain this community.   
      
   > So I'm eager to hear ideas for keeping our communities alive,   
   > whether that's via NNTP, Google Groups, shifting en masse to a   
   > new web forum, shifting en masse to an existing web forum, or   
   > whatever else.  (Gah, most web forums are a pain to follow   
   > threads in...)  Please share your thoughts!   
      
   I really wish that I had a golden solution -- I certainly share your   
   distaste for web forums, but if someone was to find a suitable web-   
   forum that has some reasonable threading, I suppose it could be   
   tempting (programming one ourselves might turn out to be a bit too   
   much).   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
       Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability   
       to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable   
       for their apparent disinclination to do so.   
    - Douglas Adams   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)