On Thu, 08 Feb 2001 20:34:58 -0800
Chuq Von Rospach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/8/01 4:38 PM, "Tim Bowden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I wonder if Usenet ever had this golden era. I don't know, I
>> guess;
> Yeah. To some degree it still is -- every generation thinks life
> is great, and every previous generation thinks the new one screwed
> things up and the good old days were better.
Yep, there are also always reactive forces and the new motions they
create. Much of the signal that was once on Usenet has moved to
mailing lists and (sadly) weblogs (sad because they are single site
and not distributed/archivable). As an example, I formed MUD-Dev as
a direct reaction against the endless testosteronal outpourings on
rgm*. Its only real promise: signal. Others have followed the same
track with other topics.
>> The Net back then was decidedly male, malevolent, and moronic, no
>> matter they knew how to post articles properly.
> As opposed to what it is today...
One side effect of population growth, and in particular, increase in
number of media-types, is that even rather tiny viewpoints (on terms
of percentages) find that they have enough numbers to sustain a
group, and can create enough presense that others of like mind may
find them. There are booingly successful forums out there for
niches that would have been entirely unsupportable 5 years ago --
there simply weren't enough people online, and as a result there
were few visibility mechanisms.
> No, I won't go there. Other than to say a lot of what you see on
> the internet depends on what you put in and where you go
> looking.
Very true.
> There are definitely areas of the net that agree with your
> definition, to generalize the net to BE that is a horrible
> overgeneralization.
<nod>
There are reasons that alt.sex.binaries.pictures.erotica and Co
account for a couple orders of magnitude more traffic than the rest
of Usenet put together. A simple stat filter put on a backbone
router skimming for porn images suggests that the ratio is not
*that* different for current 'net traffic.And yet, such streaks of
brilliance as BonsaiKitten, Slashdot and TheEdge
(http://www.edge.org/) still survive.
<kof>
>> Believe me, the influx of other humans, meaning women and those
>> who may not have been older than sixteen but at least acted it,
>> was a very definite improvement.
> They were always there. Maybe they just saw you coming and
> hid. (grin)
Populations tend to group internally. More interestingly (I've
found this a challenge for my own lists), high signal venues don't
tend to attract memberships who then promote and advertise those
forums. They're far more interested in purposive/constructive
conversation than in finding additional audience. So you end up
with sloid inward-facing packs of people around the high signal
venues, and little leaking out to attract new potential members.
I get more list members from one university professor who uses my
main list and its posts in his courses than I do from any visibility
steps I've ever taken.
--
J C Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------(*) http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
