"bud--" wrote

|
| You used to be one of the most interesting people.
|
Thanks. Nice to be remembered.

| Found anything interesting (that you would want to share here)?

In terms of newsgroups? Not really. I'm a contractor
who also does web design and writes Windows software.
So I frequent the Windows and programming groups.
There seems to be one, barely functional group left for
each Windows version. Some years ago Microsoft stopped
supporting their usenet groups. They still exist but most
people took Microsoft's lead and moved to their webpage-
based, moderated forum, which is little more than a
marketing venue.
But the Windows people, for whatever reason, have
always tended to be considerate, so the groups function
pretty well.
Then I also go to a vbscript and vb6 groups for
programming chat, which are leftover Microsoft groups.

Recently I went to a webmasters group to ask a
question. The posts were all junk, but a serious question
brought knowledgeable people out of the woodwork.

For most other things I just do searches. For instance,
car repair. I can find youtube videos and commercial
groups, and often I find the answer I need there. Last
year I needed to tile a threshold, with a mud bed, and
had never done that before. I found videos to help on
youtube.

More recently I've had an odd tire sound that I can't
figure out. I found someone who had posted a video.
It was exactly the same sound. But no one in the
group had come up with an answer.

For anything else, civility seems to be long gone.
Religion, philosophy, politics.... I don't even bother
to look at usenet for those topics. And private groups
tend to have a pecking order of wiseacres who are
comfortably settled in. I guess usenet also has that,
but on usenet they have no power.