XPost: alt.fan.usenet   
   From: jfairchild@tudado.org   
      
   The Real Bev  writes:   
      
   > On 8/27/24 3:53 PM, Johanne Fairchild wrote:   
   >> The Real Bev  writes:   
   >>   
   >>> On 8/15/24 7:07 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>> On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:11:43 -0000 (UTC), Steven M. O'Neill wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> Grant Taylor   wrote:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>>On 8/8/24 02:32, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> It's a complete rethinking of the way distributed social media is   
   >>>>>>> supposed to work.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>Usenet is not social media.   
   >>>>> ObDevilsAdvocate: Usenet is the original social medium.   
   >>>   
   >>> +1   
   >>>   
   >>> And it gives us maximum control over what we see or avoid.  No   
   >>> pictures or -- god forbid -- reels, but that's a good thing. The bad   
   >>> thing about reels is that they're addictive time-wasters.   
   >>>   
   >>>> Absolutely. And the centralization introduced by the web-based successors   
   >>>> (at least the proprietary ones) is a definite step back.   
   >>>   
   >>> What bothers me is that otherwise smart people have replaced usenet   
   >>> with Facebook.  Maybe X too, but I don't read that even if I have an   
   >>> account.   How hard can it be to do all three? The 'social media' make   
   >>> actual conversation, as opposed to post-it notes, difficult. I "know"   
   >>> the people I've known on usenet since 1995. I've met some of them IRL.   
   >>> FB people, unless friends of friends, are unknown strangers, just   
   >>> groups of words without names.   
   >> That's quite right.  I mean, I don't know anything about FB and the   
   >> other, but they're all very much unsusceptible to conversation.  So   
   >> they're totally time-wasters.   
   >   
   > Unfortunately, it's pretty much all we've got now.  Exceptions, of   
   > course, but my long-term "friends" don't show up in the newsgroups at   
   > all any more.  Not even the loons.   
      
   Sometimes we need to wait.  We've done what we could so far.  The USENET   
   is still pretty good for conversation with the global community.  I wish   
   the experts would come back at least for a little while.  I believe the   
   experts come here, find not much and they go away.  I believe many have   
   done that.  In comp.lang.lisp, for example, there are more than a few   
   experts there, but they only appear sometimes because there's not much   
   going on there.   
      
   I wrote an NNTP server for a small semi-closed group.  Perhaps the   
   openness is not a very good thing anymore.  But I do think people still   
   want the all-connected-type of application these days, even at the   
   detriment of conversation---which is absurd.  I don't think good   
   conversation can be carried out this way.  But an NNTP server, say,   
   could have a phone app that's good for reading only.  Have you tried the   
   Hacker News apps?  They let you read the comments just fine.  The same   
   could be done for an NNTP server, but I never found a decent phone news   
   reader.   
      
   I think we're doing our part.  If the world has moved on, that's fine.   
   I'll continue to use NNTP and perhaps other media that are focused on   
   writing and reading.  I don't care for images, sounds, video or whatever   
   and I also think that NNTP sort of supports all of that: people here   
   often add external URLs on which we download videos, images and whatnot.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)