On Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:38:54 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

On 21/06/17 20:24, Tim Lamb wrote:
In message , Tim Watts
writes
Someone mentioned this the other day...

====snip====



Opinions please

Might as well make it a forum and take money for advertising?


Ugh! Forums are horrid.

+1 (AoL, if you prefer). :-(

Many years ago, when Zetnet sold out to that asset stripping company,
Breathe Networks Ltd (Spit!), its dispersed membership tried to sustain
the community of "Zetnutters" that had been created by that ISP's closed
newsgroups with a zetnet forum created during zetnet's death throes as BNL
ineptly buggered up zetnet's USP (slowly on account BNL's technical staff
seemed to be a bunch of ignorant ****wits - I got an extra 12 months use
out of zetnet's news server for free before it was given the final coupé
de grace).

During that final troubled year, I joined the zetnet users' forum to get
help with 'work-around' solutions to accessing the USP of zetnet's news
server. I found it such a pain to log into just this one forum that more
or less as soon as BNL had finally killed off the news server, I gave up
trying to stay in touch with my fellow zetnutters.

Quite frankly, I can't understand how some folk manage to stay
subscribed to more than two or three such fora without 'cheating' by
simplifying/automating their 'secure' login procedures, let alone getting
to grips with the rather klunky and disparate navigation algorithms
employed.

Usenet and the various client news reader software may not be a perfect
solution but at least it scales well, unlike the web browser accessed
fora, each with their own peculiar login and navigation requirements
which don't (scale, that is!).

The idiot posters and trolls aren't really a problem for those of us
with enough common sense to make good use of the kill filter file (and
the 'ignore thread' file if your news reader client has such an option).
Failing all that, it's easy enough to ignore the postings of trolls and
idiots and the urge to make a 'Knee Jerk Response' in a futile attempt to
'educate the idiots and trolls' of 'the truth'. As one of my friends,
decades ago, was so fond of saying, "It's like trying to educate pork.".

This business of dealing with idiots and trolls might seem like a lot of
hard work - it isn't - but trying to participate in more than two or
three web fora is even more 'hard work' imho. And, what's worse is that
many of the discussions of a 'technical nature' have contributors who
would by comparison make the likes of Rod Speed and TNP look like
geniuses!!! Who'd have thought! :-(

When you've been directed to as many such 'technical fora' in my
googling for solutions to various computer related problems as I have
over the past decade or more, you soon learn 'to bite your lip' as you
realise the futility of even trying to contribute a myth busting fact to
any of these fora. It's been good training in how to make best use of
usenet. :-)

Moderation might seem like a solution to the problem of idiots and
trolls but, quite frankly, this 'cure' can often turn out to be worse
than 'the disease'. After all, there's no guarantee that the moderators
will be any less ill informed or opinionated than the idiots and trolls
it's meant to keep at bay. It's far better, imho, to retain the "Valour
is the better part of discretion." principle in the hands of the
individual contributors rather than leave this in the hands of a select
elite.

--
Johnny B Good