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Spaf's Farewell, Ten Years Later
catfood writes "Ten years ago this evening, Usenet legend Gene Spafford posted his farewell to news.announce.newusers, news.misc, and a few other newsgroups. Among other things, spaf wrote: 'People don't seem to think before posting, they are purposely rude, they blatantly violate copyrights, they crosspost everywhere, use 20 line signature files, and do basically every other thing the postings (and common sense and common courtesy) advise not to. Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read.' Speaking of his own post, spaf said, 'even if it is perceived as self-indulgent garbage, it will fit right in with the rest of the net.'
Ten years later, we still have all of spaf's complaints plus mounting spammage just barely held in check by auto-canceling volunteers. Is Usenet still useful? Is it worth maintaining? I say yes, but I can feel spaf's pain. It may be too late now, but hey spaf: thanks."
Especially since the advent of google groups. It makes it much easier to find past posts. This gives news groups a much longer memory and, in theory, should prevent repetitive posts.
In addition, it makes USENET an extremely effective support venue. Whenever I have an unexplained error or problem with one of my machines, I just search groups.google.com and more often than not, I find that someone has had the same exact problem that I'm experiencing.For instance, I often read rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns and a few other newsgroups via google groups when I'm bored.
When I first got on the internet in 1994, USENET was the place to be. I remember the early rumblings, tho, that segregated web-based message boards would one day overtake USENET and make it a vast wasteland. I didn't think it made any sense to purposely limit your conversations to such small focused sites, and figured it would never work.
I haven't used USENET in years now. It got too painful in the mid- to late-1990s to sort through all the spam and all the trolls and all the people posting pointless one-liners to hear themselves talk.
Granted, you still have many of the latter showing up on web-based message boards, but the spam is definitely much better controlled, and the volume of traffic is easier to handle as both a reader and a moderator.
But, man, Spafford was dead-on and years ahead of his time. I'd love to see a message board system with the kind of intelligence and grace that he used to see on USENET in the earlier days. The only way you're going to get it is on a web-based board or through a mailing list.
Too bad.
Too many cooks, perhaps.
-Augie
The largest UK newsgroup; One of the largest in the world.
Almost no spam. Why? Because spammers get flamed mercilessly, their accounts get cancelled and the advertisers accounts also get cancelled. Plus the cancelbots of course.
No top posting. Why? Because newbies and OE morons get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
The FAQ does get read. Why? Because for a start, it's useful and newbies and morons get flamed mercilessly for not reading and absorbing it.
Crossposting is limited. Why? Because crossposters get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
It's the usenet equivalent of New York's zero tolerance campaign.
In short, usenet has degenerated to crap because people don't stand up for the use of their groups. Basically, don't be so fucking polite. If you don't like it, feel free to fuck off and die.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
One good thing is mailing list -> usenet converters. It means we get all the mailing lists + the power of google. Killer combination
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
It is my experience that clueless newbies do not know about groops.google.com, so they will post the same questions in any medium, Usenet or Web Board, regardless of any centralized archive. But your comment about Web Boards not being archived is valid.
The "Wild West" was NOT "new and uncharted" at the time that it was called the Wild West. It was quite well charted and explored. What distinguished it was the fact that it was still in an early stage of being settled and the Territories had not yet congealed into more well organized States.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We published an interview with Spaf a little while ago and his insights still are well-worth reading and heeding. He is still very concerned about the newest users on the Internet, etiquette, ethics, and the impact of networked communication on society. You can read the interview here.
So many of these pages have horrible UI's too. I end up on them occasionally after a Google search, and just have the hardest time following threads and jumping back and forth. I don't understand why anybody would want to use such an abysmal interface. groups.google.com is one of the best search resources, and the UI it presents works much better than those crappy web boards.
I've often googled for technical questions and found them on forums. Google does indicate dynamic pages, it isn't braindead. Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate i guess.
Photos.
The article Gene Spafford wrote was not his farewell to Usenet. He was maintaining a variety of files, e.g. A list of all groups and what each groups charter was, Usenet History, new user info, etc. He simply said that he was no longer going to maintain that stuff because he didn't feel that people really cared about it (as evidenced by people ignoring most of it). He specifically said in that article that he was going to remain involved in a few groups.