I don't have any recommendations for online forums or other groups.

I recently began revisiting SER because another newsgroup I'd been reading
is actually experiencing a slow miserable death, with the cooperation and
participation of the formerly-consciencious members.

Spam doesn't mark the ruination of a newsgroup, since spam can be easily
deleted, ignored and/or filtered with a proper news reader.

When the majority of the posts drift off topic into something as stupid as
misguided opinions about political figures, the newsgroup really does go
into a death spiral.

I immediately noticed that many of the SER participants of about 10 years
ago were no longer posting in SER.
The repair industry isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. Many
servicers began looking for other technical occupational positions years
ago, when the huge influx of cheap throw-away goods began to flood most
markets.

Usenet newsgroups typically have a fairly high turnover of temporary users
(and many lurkers that rarely, or never post messages), but the loss of the
helpful, experienced base members, and the shortage of knowlegable new
replacement members, really has had a serious impact on SER.

There appear to be a lot of online forums, which many may favor, since they
are generally moderated. Moderation eliminates spam and off topic
zealots/hotheads that are content to just abuse any forum for their own
agenda.
I've participated in a couple of online forums, but they do have some
limitations, such as searching archived articles/posts.
Also, some online forums are primarily marketing enterprises, with
advertising and other annoying features.

--
Cheers,
WB
..............


"Mark Zacharias" wrote in message
...
I used to spend a lot of time perusing the likes of sci.electronics.repair,
rec.audio.tech, etc but anymore it seems just about everyone has left the
room for good, except the spammers of course...

Any good electronics repair forums you guys like?

(those of you still around here that is...)

Mark Z.