In message , Duncan
Hoyle writes
Fred Holder wrote:
For many years, I have read and posted to rec.crafts.woodturning
newsgroup, but in the last year it seems to be dying or people are
being run off by the off topic posts selling some unrelated item or
promoting something not related to woodturning.
I am reading it through Google, so it could be this is the problem.
It
was only a year or so ago that my old source went away.
Fred Holder
http://www.morewoodturning.net


I don't think I've contributed here before, but I've been reading for a
year or so.

I think that the main reason that this newsgroup (as well as many
others) is dying is that it is text only. A lot of discussions are made
clearer by referencing photos/drawings and that is easier on the
various forums that exist (I use http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/
and WOW).
UKWorkshop, for example, lets me post messages that have embedded
images rather than having to post a message that says to follow various
links. It can take a while to get used to because you require personal
image hosting but, once set up, it's pretty straightforward.

Another potential problem with newsgroups is that they are
un-moderated, and this can lead to spam problems and discussions that
get out of hand.

Duncan

One of the problems forgotten by the majority of Internet users these
days is that images are BIG, they may help illustrate a point but are a
bandwidth killer. A friend recently lived in Nigeria, and his Best
connection speed was about 28K for a few hours a day when the web was
working and for the occasional week per month when the copper cables
hadn't been stolen ! and that was in the region of $60 US a month IIRC.
Basically its forgotten that there are many out there with a slow
expensive connection speed.

Many websites now provide bandwidth hogging flash etc., forgetting the
user who pays per minute. This is where newsgroups stand on their own.

I think also many ISP's just don't give enough information on what
newsgroups are about.

And then there are those who have tried newsgroups, not knowing that
they really shouldn't put their email address unless they want to join
the billion and 1 spam lists It sort of frightens them off

As to newsgroups being unmoderated, that is not strictly true, you can
set up newsgroups that are moderated, just in this case its not

In the UK the government wants 90% of homes on the NET, which is easily
achievable, but then you will probably find 80% of the users are not
"Internet Ready"
--
John