🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <xlxaej5vr9i.fsf@gold.cis.ohio-state.edu>,
  Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net> wrote:
> >>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Billman <jbillma@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>   Jeff> Firstly, it tends to introduce people to online discussion.
>
> Perhaps.  But the result is that you end up with a lot people who are
> "new to online discussion", which tends to make for comparatively poor
> dynamics of a newsgroup.  The Old Guard of Usenet tend to be more
> interesting, and make for much more lively discussion.  Having a bunch
> of new folks around can be nice for a while, but there's only so much
> tolerance that one has for articles that are essentially unedited
> streams of consciousness.

Bearing in mind that the "Old Guard" consists almost entirely of
computer geeks like us, I'd say there are some instances where fresh
perspective might be welcomed from someone who hasn't been rehashing
the same net arguments for five years or more.

>   Jeff> Secondly, the rigor of registering newsgroups- even within the
>   Jeff> alt.* hierarchy- does not spark interest in creating new
>   Jeff> groups nowadays.
>
> Well, that's because in order to justify having the traffic sanctioned
> by news admins, there has to be some traffic there to show that
> there's an interest.  Generally, the best way to do this is to start a
> mailing list.  Once there's a mailing list with sufficient traffic,
> starting a Usenet group isn't too difficult.

Yes, Matt, you are correct in that this is the traditional way to start
a newsgroup, but e-mail involves an entirely different dynamic than
does either web-based or Usenet discussion.  I've found that the end-
game scenario on mailing lists tends either to result in close-knit
groups of people who continue on the list indefinitely and are
decreasingly welcome to new subscribers, or else an unwieldly large
group which might get its charter before it reaches critical mass and
implodes as subscribers are unable or unwilling to take the large
volume.  Even in digest form, a large mailing list is cumbersome to
navigate; and when a significant number of subscribers are digest-only,
discussion on the list suffers.

This says nothing of the fact that mailing lists are often less diverse
than web-based or Usenet, and therefore discussion takes on a different
hue.  Web-based discussions can operate quite well on the same traffic
that sustains a mailing list, yet have the flavor of a Usenet
newsgroup.  It's also possible (though, as far as I know, yet to be
proven) that a web-based forum could demonstrate its utility
sufficiently to obtain a Usenet charter at some point in the future,
much as mailing lists have in the past.

> Interesting thoughts.  I'd like to learn how it actually goes in
> practice.  I'm inclined to disagree, but neither do I hide the fact
> that I'm really biased in favor of Usenet, especially at the expense
> of "inferior" alternatives for exactly the same thing.

In my opinion, mailing lists are of even lesser quality.  Perhaps the
best comparison would not be of web-based discussions to newsgroups,
but to mailing lists instead.

> Of course, if you want to have local discussions, you can get some of
> the "wins" of having everything work via NNRP without having the
> overhead of being a part of Usenet Proper by running your own
> hierarchy off of your own servers.  There are standardized ways of
> doing this, and any client worth anything at all should grok this
> without any problems.  (You'll still suffer some of the scalability
> issues, but presumably for a comparatively small target audience like
> this, that is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.)

I see precious little advantage to this solution, interesting though it
may be.  IMHO, this would be of use only if users were already on my
server for some other purpose, and then only as part of some kind of e-
campus (in other words, all users are members of the same company,
university, organization, etc.) where discussion could center around
topics of interest to the campus.
--
Jeff Billman
Columbus, OH


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.