ccf807ce   
   From: vagans@inanna.eanna.net   
      
   alienthe@hotmail.com wrote:   
   > On Nov 21, 6:43 am, Sourcerer  wrote:   
   >> On Nov 20, 10:14 pm, Gene Sullivan  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> > Sourcerer  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> short, months, not years.  Back then 'vanishing', especially in the   
   >> first half of the 1990s, was coincident with a high percentage of   
   >> xposts.  It was obvious that a newsgroup with low stats and a narrow   
   >> range of interest could be hollowed-out by xposting in a few months if   
   >> the members didn't get proactive about it.   
   >   
   > I suspect I am not alone in being forced off the groups by the work   
   > load. Has everyone grown up, left Never Never Land, and signed up with   
   > LinkedIn? I see at least a few of the regulars there. One person   
   > appears even to have erased himself from the Google archives, possibly   
   > in preparing for the corporate life style.   
      
   I was reading an old post of mine from the 1990s. It mentions several   
   threads here related to our struggle with xposters. I can find none of   
   them in google's archive. I have my own archive, though.   
      
   >> > that made me want to stop reading Usenet, only without most of the   
   >> > interesting stuff. Campbell's Consensed Cream of Crap.   
   >>   
   >> After posting to web forums for three years I came to the same   
   >> conclusion, and stopped last year.   
   >>   
   >> > I've noticed a recent renewed interest in Usenet, though. The spam   
   >> > and idiots drove out the regulars, and the lack of regulars made   
   >> > the spammers and idiots move on. Maybe there's still hope.   
      
   I doubt it. Revive altcp and the xposters will be back. In rasfw one of   
   the xpost threads is over 1700 articles now.  The only reason to revile   
   xposts -- besides aesthetics -- is that it blocks noobs from seeing the   
   newsgroup they were looking and hoping for.  After awhile the newsgroup   
   dies.  Using an rn class newsreader like trn solves the aesthetic issue   
   because it will kill xposts with a simple regexp, but that doesn't help   
   the noobs who are unlikely to be using the old technology.  I like the   
   old technology. One issue I have with new tech is that it is   
   probably crap, and gamed to get to you, no matter the kewl bells and   
   whistles (see the pretty keys a'jangling?).   
      
   > Considering the political and financial situation of 2009 I would have   
   > thought that there should be a lot of life left in this group.   
      
   2005 follows on both the US Presidential election and the earthquake   
   tsunami. 2005 was the year of hurricane Katrina.  It was the year that   
   ebay consolidated paypal and the European auction sites. It   
   was the year ex-paypal employees began Facebook. MySpace came online in   
   what? January or February? Probably Flickr, too, around then. 2005 was the   
   year that high speed internet became common in the US, when web blog and   
   forum templates became popular. Twitter appears in 2006. 2004-2006 is   
   a timeframe worth looking at closely.   
      
   > Oh yes, that reminds me: I was planning to write a post this year,   
   > asking if anyone would feel old knowing that this year it is 25 years   
   > since Neuromancer appeared. Also Matrix has an anniversary:   
      
   It may to those who constructed their youthful identities with them.  These   
   days I check the stats, consumed with curiosity why altcyberpunk.com   
   since I posted the url here has the majority of its hits coming from   
   .mil addresses, including a dod site in Kabul.   
      
   You grow up to discover life is a lot like fiction.   
      
   --   
     (__)    Sourcerer   
    /(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O   
     \../  |OO|||O|||O||   Mirroring the shadows of futurity   
      ||   OO|||OO||O||O   since 1993   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)