"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
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


I'm not at all sure that I agree with you that S.E.R. has lost a lot of
regular posters. I've been on here for quite a lot of years - maybe not
quite 10, but probably not far off - and most of the experienced posters
that were on here when I first jumped in, are still around now. For sure
some come and go, and there is always a 'quiet' time in the summer, but for
the most part, the pool of expertise is still here. And as to the repair
trade having changed, yes, it has somewhat, but only in as much as the
challenges have changed, and many of the old valve (tube) swappers and
polishers, have fallen by the wayside. There is still plenty of stuff in the
market to be repaired, despite the Chinese throw aways. It's just that there
are now fewer high street places left to do the work. Everyone said the
trade was dead when high reliability Japanese kit first started flooding the
market, but those of us who rolled with it, and took the time and trouble to
get to grips with their innovative designs, are still here, and still doing
the job, and still advising both the amateurs, and professionals of
different electrical and electronic disciplines, who come on S.E.R. to ask
for that help.


As you say, the spam is easily filtered - but only if you know how. A lot of
advice has been given on here as to how to do this, but for anyone who is
just a 'casual' computer user, I could imagine that it might be a bit
daunting to set up, especially where a separate program is being suggested
to do the job.

Although I use Xnews for some of my usenet stuff, I admit that I just use
the newsreader built into OE for text groups like this, and operate via the
news server provided by my ISP. I know many believe anything put out by MS
to be the devil's work, and especially their OE newsreader, but it is
perfectly adequate for reading and posting on groups such as S.E.R., and
above all, it is *very* simple to set up and maintain filters, using its
inbuilt functionality.

Arfa