XPost: alt.fan.usenet   
   From: nospam@example.net   
      
   On Wed, 28 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:   
      
   > 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.   
   >   
      
   The highest expert ratio I have generally found on moderated mailinglists.   
   I've also detected a few on usenet as well, so they are here, you just   
   need to learn how to detect them. ;)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)