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Re: OT: on places such as the USENET

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On 1/30/2022 1:21 PM, Meredith Montgomery wrote:
> It's amazing how much I can't see when I'm analysing the smallest
> problems.  I only know this because of places such as the USENET.  I
> post my big problems here and you guys show how small they are.
> 
> This leads to me wonder about the future of the USENET.
> 
> These days there are privately-owned places on the web where technical
> people share questions and answers.  They're not nearly well-populated
> as the USENET.  This seems very clear to me.

I think this depends on the usenet group. This is fairly well behaving, 
others are simply dead.

> 
> As an optimistic note, I always conclude that smart people will always
> build a good place for them.  But pessimistically I wonder if this is
> happening right now.  I do not consider these privately-owned places on
> the web to be a good place.  (Their format of question-and-answers, for
> instance, is a lose.  Smart people don't want to be framed like that.
> Not to mention the medium under the control of someone else.)  (I know
> there are very smart people in these places.  I'm not failing to
> recognize that.)

This is a very interesting observation. In other words, the quality of a 
group is only as good as the quality of the participants.
And, on the other hand, a framework for the group may help keep order, 
but inevitably ends up limiting its contents.

> 
> When I talk to very young people, I notice how they never heard of
> things like the USENET or IRC.

This is what I find most concerning: oblivion is probably the first 
threat to usenet, and that's sad, because, as others have said, usenet 
is a bastion of free speech.
I first heard about it during my university days, quite a few decades 
ago. It was pretty popular at that time. Now, not even close.

About your reference to "young" people, I think that with the advent of 
global connection they have become a huge "market" (not only commercial, 
think of the value of the count of "followers")
Thus the proliferation of frameworks to count them in. The problem 
raises when they get used to acting within one.

This reminds me of a related point: a number of years ago I saw on an 
analysis on BBC about the effect of web search engines, particularly google.
The analysis focused on how this was (is) affecting journalism: writers 
are forced to write pieces that are easily indexable by search engines, 
and this invariably affects their prose. The price for ignoring that, 
and writing your own way, is the risk of being missed by such 
algorithms, and thus get penalized in your work.
But, in journalism (and not only) the form, shape is effectively 
essence, substance, so search algorithms are in fact affecting how ideas 
and opinions get spread.


> 
> I'm sure you guys have discussed all of this before.  If not anything
> else, at least this post should serve as a thank-you-note.  Thank you!

Really off topic, but interesting. Thank you.

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OT: on places such as the USENET Meredith Montgomery <mmontgomery@levado.to> - 2022-01-30 09:21 -0300
  Re: OT: on places such as the USENET doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) - 2022-01-30 13:51 +0000
    Re: OT: on places such as the USENET Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.com> - 2022-02-05 15:00 +0300
  Re: OT: on places such as the USENET Manfred <noname@add.invalid> - 2022-01-30 16:26 +0100
    Re: OT: on places such as the USENET NOSPAM.Alex.Sardo@darkrealms.ca (Alex Sardo) - 2022-01-30 13:16 +0000
  Re: OT: on places such as the USENET Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> - 2022-02-05 14:22 +0800

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