On 01/28/2016 11:05 AM, Orange wrote:


"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
On 01/28/2016 12:24 AM, Orange wrote:


"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
On 01/27/2016 08:28 PM, Orange wrote:


"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
On 01/27/2016 05:07 PM, Orange wrote:
"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
On 01/27/2016 11:52 AM, Jolly Roger wrote:
On 2016-01-27, The Real Bev
wrote:
On 01/26/2016 06:11 AM, chris wrote:
On 22/01/2016 22:47, The Real Bev wrote:
This **** is why usenet has so few viable
groups left. Do you really want to kill this
one too?

That's what killfiles are for. You never need to
hear from the trolls/idiots/flamers again.

Of course. It's also possible to just not look at
things. But when the overwhelming majority of
posts are pure trash, reasonable people just stop
reading. I'm tougher than most, I don't give up
easily, and I know how useless taking a group
moderated can be. If people would just stop
responding to the ****heads (clearly an
impossibility, as history shows) the problem would
disappear; unfortunately, it's more likely that
the group disappears.

Of the groups into which this is x-posted, I only
read comp.mobile.android. I really hope that this
crap doesn't kill that group.

People have been trying and failing to kill Usenet
for a long, long time. I wouldn't worry about it.

The groups that I reallly liked and was involved with
are all dead. Perhaps people just find facebook easier
to deal with. Or more pleasant. Or something.

What has actually happened is that almost no one has even
heard of usenet, so inevitably it fades away as people
die off or stop using it.

Few used it even when it was highly active.

And few had even heard about it even then.

When I rode on the ski
lifts with strangers I asked them if they ever used any of
the skiing or other newsgroups. Granted, a small sample
-- maybe 100 people, if that -- but you'd think that ONE
might have been an addict. Nope.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if almost none of them had even
heard about it.

Exactly. The closest response was "You mean like myspace?"

For swift help from strangers, many of whom are actually
qualified to offer it, nothing has even come close.

You clearly don’t use facebook. Even with the most basic
question like what shops are open on Xmas day or who is the
best vet to get a pet microchipped at most cheaply, you
normally get an answer very quickly, even if you ask at say
4am.

Most of my FB friends live in other states and are unlikely to
know such things.

I wasn’t talking about facebook friends.

What do you mean?

The local facebook group. Ours is called 'xxxxxx community
notice board'

In my experience with other 'local' non-facebook groups, 'local'
people for my locality are... inexpert.

You don’t need to be an expert in that sort of thing, just to have
noticed it or to have experienced it.

And you get the experts there too. In the case of the places open on
a national holiday, one of the few places in my town that chose to
be open that day did in fact publicise that fact in that group
deliberately.

I was trying to be diplomatic. What I really meant was "too dumb to
actually have a useful opinion about anything including the current
weather".

The same thing has happened with those the people who show up in
town and will microchip your pet in your own home much more cheaply
than the vets will do it for, in a blitz town by town. That is in
fact by far the best way to get the word out when you are doing
something like that, now that so few bother to pay for the town
newspaper anymore.

I canceled ours a few years ago (after having read it for over 50 years)
because it had degenerated into social notes and "We buy gold"
advertisements.

Same with those whose pet goes missing, plenty post a picture of it
in that facebook group and quite quickly have someone say where they
have seen the pet. And the reverse, post a picture of a pet that has
clearly got lost, to have others say whose pet it might be and have
the owner show say that it is theirs and thank the original poster.

That's in a town of about 26K people.

140K. I've lived here for 48 years and I don't even know my next door
neighbors, although we say 'Hi' on the off-chance that we happen to see
one another.

--
Cheers, Bev
I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you might not get it.
-- K.E. Long