HoNoToGroABeMo Day Thirty-One: It Is Done
5 years ago
10:15 AM
A random sampling of USENET topics on Goggle's Goggle Groups:
"How to learn English in Hong Kong"
"Gambling guide on Net"
"Ebay Auctions"
"The World's Largest Sex & Swinger Personals site!"
"Have you ever play Loteria Mexicana?"
"Top Online Casinos Updated"
These are some of the postings you might expect to see sprinkled liberally throughout one of the nicer USENET groups-- e.g., a group that doesn't explicitly handle porn, politics, holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, get-rich-quick schemers, and amateur historians of the Armenian Holocaust (the latter is a long, long story).
The total effect of this kind of thing has been to render USENET marginal over the years. Once the world's bulletin board service, USENET has been in sad decline for at least 5 to 10 years-- as the people who made the community what it is left in disgust and the crazies and hucksters took over.
To their credit, GOOGLE (which bought the rights to the USENET archive from DEJANEWS a few years back) has made GREAT strides in filtering out the garbage. Their new Group reader beta is by far and away the best iteration yet, and keeps out about 80% of all the offtopic crap that ruins boards. Still, there's that annoying 10-20% that think it's amusing to vent their spleen on USENET, and their going to be hard to get rid off.
An interesting alternative to the Google approach is the Talkabout Network:
Which is, according to their mission statement:
In reality, they follow a USENET styled threading and posting system, but seem to be very good about filtering out garbage posts. How this is achieved, I don't know yet. The depth of topics is not quite as good as the USENET system is/was/used to be, but I have not detected a lot of spurious posting in the four or five groupings I've been to so far. New topic creation appears to be easier than the voting system on USENET, as well. There's still the same old crap that comes from human squabbling, but that's impossible to avoid.
Some modules of interest to me:
Historical Miniatures
Development and Design
Arts, Photography
Arts, Graphic Design ++
Arts, Science Fiction ++
Arts, Video ++
Arts, Comics ++
Arts, Literature ++
Recreation, Motorcycles
Computers, Internet ++
(++ indicates that there are subsidiary levels)
Best of all, it's free, like all the good things in the world.
"How to learn English in Hong Kong"
"Gambling guide on Net"
"Ebay Auctions"
"The World's Largest Sex & Swinger Personals site!"
"Have you ever play Loteria Mexicana?"
"Top Online Casinos Updated"
These are some of the postings you might expect to see sprinkled liberally throughout one of the nicer USENET groups-- e.g., a group that doesn't explicitly handle porn, politics, holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, get-rich-quick schemers, and amateur historians of the Armenian Holocaust (the latter is a long, long story).
The total effect of this kind of thing has been to render USENET marginal over the years. Once the world's bulletin board service, USENET has been in sad decline for at least 5 to 10 years-- as the people who made the community what it is left in disgust and the crazies and hucksters took over.
To their credit, GOOGLE (which bought the rights to the USENET archive from DEJANEWS a few years back) has made GREAT strides in filtering out the garbage. Their new Group reader beta is by far and away the best iteration yet, and keeps out about 80% of all the offtopic crap that ruins boards. Still, there's that annoying 10-20% that think it's amusing to vent their spleen on USENET, and their going to be hard to get rid off.
An interesting alternative to the Google approach is the Talkabout Network:
Which is, according to their mission statement:
The Talk About Network is a family of websites allowing for open communication around the world and in your neck of the woods. We allow members to have conversations (topics) that can last minutes, days, months or years. We allow these to be archived and fully searchable and readable by visitors so they can benefit from the knowledge of past and future visitors.
In reality, they follow a USENET styled threading and posting system, but seem to be very good about filtering out garbage posts. How this is achieved, I don't know yet. The depth of topics is not quite as good as the USENET system is/was/used to be, but I have not detected a lot of spurious posting in the four or five groupings I've been to so far. New topic creation appears to be easier than the voting system on USENET, as well. There's still the same old crap that comes from human squabbling, but that's impossible to avoid.
Some modules of interest to me:
Historical Miniatures
Development and Design
Arts, Photography
Arts, Graphic Design ++
Arts, Science Fiction ++
Arts, Video ++
Arts, Comics ++
Arts, Literature ++
Recreation, Motorcycles
Computers, Internet ++
(++ indicates that there are subsidiary levels)
Best of all, it's free, like all the good things in the world.
