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Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet?

From Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com>
Newsgroups alt.fan.usenet, alt.culture.usenet, news.groups
Subject Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet?
Date 2025-03-01 23:19 -0300
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <87zfi4jhs7.fsf@example.com> (permalink)
References <vpkfok$f4j$1@reader1.panix.com> <slrnvrse41.3masd.candycanearter07@candydeb.host.invalid> <4400281b445263dfef126126f3b6df70$1@novabbs.org> <vptldt$3tfej$1@dont-email.me>

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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Steve Bonine <spb@pobox.com> writes:

> Retro Guy wrote:
>
>> Also, I don't know why someone is posting short quotes, not opinion on the
>> quote, and links to Reddit. I, and I'm guessing some others, are not going
>> to visit Reddit to read the info.
>
> This is an example of the opinion that re-posts of material from other
> sources (mailing lists, newsletters, social media) will revive a
> newsgroup.  If your newsgroup is dying, you can revive it by posting
> material from other sources.  You have to admit that the article that
> you are disparaging has resulted in a flurry of activity in the target
> newsgroups.
>
> I am not personally a fan of this technique.  My impression is that
> you end up with low-quality traffic that does not result in any
> followups in the newsgroup, to the point where the group becomes an
> echo of material available elsewhere. Is there value in consolidating
> information from several sources into one place?  Perhaps, but I
> prefer to go to the source and not be dependent on someone else to
> choose what I read.

I have no strong opinion on this, but on first glance it doesn't seem
too bad of an idea to bring to the attention of the group members
something that occurred outside.

Ben Collver in comp.misc often posts entire articles and I always print
them all without even reading a sentence because the Ben Collver filter
is of the highest quality.  The printout comes out perfect because,
being plain text, there's no surprise to be found on the printout.

Without ever getting an explanation from Ben Collver, I've been assuming
that what he posts is what he reads and I consider that a great service.
I myself often look at Hacker News, for example, and fetch interesting
articles I find there; then, using a print-friendly Firefox extension to
clean up the messy HTML, I print them out to read them offline.  I often
don't repost anything here because it's a bit of work to clean up the
web articles.  So if we post the entire article, it's a service we're
making to the community.  (I'm aware the OP wrote ``short quotes'' and I
think that's well observed---to be useful, I think the entire article
should be well-formatted here.)

In summary, if you post an article, I assume that you read it and you
enjoyed it, so there's always an implicit comment.  There is a service
in that---it's a filter.

By the way, I think Hacker News is almost great---the problem is all on
ther the /web/ interface.  There's nothing wrong with the interface;
it's just choice of medium that's the problem.  I'd prefer to use a
terminal to search, for example, than to visit the web.  I see no point
in web forums when we have NNTP.

Perhaps we should be talking about extending NNTP clients to be more
powerful and extending servers, too, but perhaps we shouldn't---perhaps
we should just extend NNTP servers to be used by a telnet or netcat
client, which is a lot easier.  (Oops---I totally changed the subject.)

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Thread

Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) - 2025-02-25 13:15 +0000
  Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2025-02-25 12:07 -0600
    Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) - 2025-02-26 05:44 +0000
  Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 22:15 +0100
    Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:03 -0300
  Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-02-25 21:40 +0000
    Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? John <john@building-m.simplistic-anti-spam-measure.net> - 2025-02-25 21:48 +0000
    Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Retro Guy <retroguy@novabbs.com> - 2025-02-25 14:47 -0700
      Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) - 2025-02-26 05:54 +0000
      Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-02-27 20:40 +0000
      Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Steve Bonine <spb@pobox.com> - 2025-02-28 18:46 -0600
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-28 20:47 -0500
          Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-03-01 02:07 +0000
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <noreply@mixmin.net> - 2025-03-01 02:23 +0000
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-01 23:19 -0300
          Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2025-03-03 18:39 -0600
            Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 22:08 -0300
              Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> - 2025-03-08 01:34 +0000
                Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2025-03-07 21:52 -0600
              Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2025-03-07 21:52 -0600
          Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Anthk NM <anthk@disroot.org> - 2025-11-23 09:11 +0000
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2025-03-03 08:32 -0600
          Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <noreply@mixmin.net> - 2025-03-03 15:31 +0000
            Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) - 2025-03-04 00:57 +0000
              Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 22:11 -0300
          Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) - 2025-03-04 00:42 +0000
            Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <noreply@mixmin.net> - 2025-03-04 03:52 +0000
            Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2025-03-04 13:55 -0600
  Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2025-02-26 20:14 -0600
    Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 14:26 +0100
      Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 13:48 -0300
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 13:55 -0300
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-02-27 18:37 +0000
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-01 11:33 +0100
      Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2025-02-27 19:12 -0600
        Re: Why can't we just "reset" Usenet? Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-02-28 11:02 +0000

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