On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> I never had a facebook account, so my evolution went from brief usenet
>> in the late 90s, to BBS:s, to web forums for many years, and lately a
>> come back for usenet.
>>
>> I think there is a small trickle of new people from the digital
>> minimalism movement.
>
> Some people think of Stack Overflow as a certain replacement or
> competitor for the USENET. But have you considered that perhaps they
> could be getting near their end? With Google Groups leaving the USENET,
> I wonder if the USENET will house the experts once again. Experts are
> people who study. People who study do need to exchange ideas. These
> trendy tools out there are obviously inadequate for experts. So there
> must be the need for experts to communicate. And when we look at the
> USENET today, it's doing great.
>
> And if you're someone who has come back to the USENET, we can ask---why?
> What happpened that brought you back? If you're not an outlier, then
> perhaps you're an illustration of a relevant phenomenon.
>

Well, in my case, it was a combination of several factors. First of all, I
don't like to update my web browser every day, so more and more websites
are no longer working for me, including forums. Second, more discussions
moved to discord, chat rooms, facebook etc. I tried mastodon, but find it
awful for long form discussions. So one day I remembered mailinglists and
usenet from my youth and thought that perhaps the quality and signal to
noise have become better on those platforms since the world has moved on,
and since the common man no longer knows how to access them... and lo and
behold... I was right! ;)

So web sites no longer working, discussions moving into proprietary
platforms, discussions moving to platforms I do not like (discord,
mastodon etc.) are probably some of the factors I hopped onto usenet and
mailinglists again.

D <nospam@example.net> wrote at 21:40 this Thursday (GMT):
>
>
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>>
>>> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>>>
>>>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>>>
>>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>>> uncomfortable to use.
>>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>>
>> That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
>> good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
>> can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
>> good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
>> from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
>> worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.
>>
>> USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
>> people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
>> the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
>> important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>> flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>> the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.
>>
>> Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
>> Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
>> small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
>> important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
>> like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>> sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>> computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>> technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>> distracted with nonsense.
>>
>> Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
>> conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
>> all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
>> people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
>> depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
>> can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
>> different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
>> distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
>> thinking.
>>
>
> Makes a lot of sense to me. I fear for the day that Microsoft and Google
> will try to take away my email from me, by no longer allowing third party
> email operators, or making it very hard to be one.

At the very least, you could still maybe use third party apps with
imap3?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> D to Rich:
>
>>> Sadly, the young crowd is just trading one corporate
>>> devil for another equally bad corporate devil.
>>
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads
>> of women by telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> It's not what you say, it's the way you say it.

Please take this to alt.sex.wizards where it belongs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
> As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>the time I want.

I know a social networking site where you can join chats,
participate in forums, or publish articles.

I can spend hours writing a forum post or article in my text
editor without any distractions, then just open my browser and
paste the text into the site's input field when I'm done.

But I also don't recall anything flashing on this social networking
site, so I don't even need a text editor to avoid distractions.

>Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord.

Alright, those are off my radar. Maybe they're cooked up for
folks who get their kicks from watching flashing. And these
people roll up and go, "Holy guacamole! Flashing! I'm gonna
plant my flag right here." It's like they've found their
personal Disneyland or something.

> If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>distracted with nonsense.

Is that why all these big-shot coders, wordsmiths, and scientists
are sticking around here in Usenet instead of using websites?

On Fri, 26 Jul 2024, candycanearter07 wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote at 21:40 this Thursday (GMT):
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>
>>> Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 25.07.2024 um 11:49 Uhr George Musk wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> You may try to make them use more modern open solutions like Mastodon,
>>>>
>>>> I've tried out mastodon and I don't like it. Only usable for chit-chat,
>>>> you can't open a "thread" in a new tab by middle click, so rather
>>>> uncomfortable to use.
>>>> The content is also mostly non-interesting, like Twitter. Some people
>>>> who hate Elon Musk now moved to mastodon and post their bullshit there.
>>>
>>> That's what most people don't realize: most of these chat systems are no
>>> good for conversation. People don't realize this because they also
>>> can't really tell a good conversation from chit-chat. That's because a
>>> good conversation requires thinking, but most people can't tell thinking
>>> from brain activity. In other words, the underlying phenomenon is more
>>> worrying. We've reduced thinking quality in the large.
>>>
>>> USENET is antiquated in some sense, but it's still the system where
>>> people can write calmly with no distractions. Therefore USENET is still
>>> the most adequate because there is no other system with these most
>>> important features. As I'm writing this paragraph, there is nothing
>>> flashing on my screen and nobody is waiting for me, so I can take all
>>> the time I want. And that increases the quality of the conversation.
>>>
>>> Here's an example. Most USENET clients maximize your writing screen.
>>> Compare that with Whatsapp or Discord. You write your message in a
>>> small region of the program, clearly implying that your writing is not
>>> important. What about all the flashing stuff? These programs all look
>>> like a Christmas tree. If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>>> sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>>> computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>>> technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>>> distracted with nonsense.
>>>
>>> Good conversation is sort of the same. If you start an oral
>>> conversation with someone and, say, the person goes off on some tangent
>>> all the time, that conversation doesn't get very deep. (For most
>>> people, perhaps, that's no problem because they don't even know what
>>> depth is.) Getting off on tangents is not so bad on USENET because we
>>> can easily backtrack a thread, say. Conversation in writing is
>>> different from oral conversation. But the point is that not getting
>>> distracted is important in conversation or anything else that requires
>>> thinking.
>>>
>>
>> Makes a lot of sense to me. I fear for the day that Microsoft and Google
>> will try to take away my email from me, by no longer allowing third party
>> email operators, or making it very hard to be one.
>
>
> At the very least, you could still maybe use third party apps with
> imap3?
>

Let's hope so.

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

[...]

>> If you read writers blogs, you will notice
>>sometimes they write about their tools and they talk about pens, paper,
>>computers and text editors. The same applies to programmers and other
>>technical people such as scientists. They all talk about not getting
>>distracted with nonsense.
>
> Is that why all these big-shot coders, wordsmiths, and scientists
> are sticking around here in Usenet instead of using websites?

Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.

Changing subject, perhaps the USENET isn't good for the expert either.
Experts likely enjoy talking to other experts, so perhaps today they
need their own semi-closed conference system such as e-mail because the
USENET is far too open. (I, for example, use a semi-closed NNTP
system---for local conversation.)

I believe communities should effectively not be too large and that is
very likely true for technical subjects. So perhaps the USENET is no
good for the expert. I don't consider myself an expert and I think I'm
still here because the USENET is currently pretty small.

> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>
> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.

For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Retrograde wrote:

>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>
>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>
> For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
> Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.
>

This is the truth! I hear you know your way around the world of the fairer
sex!

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.

The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.
>
> The experts used to be here.

Just in case we're not on the same page, that's precisely what I was
saying too.

> Linux was announced in comp.os.minix. Tim Berners Lee published a
> summary of the World Wide Web project to the alt.hypertext
> newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

Thanks for the examples. Indeed, if there's something certain about
experts is that they like to exchange ideas. So, if they're not here
doing what they like do, they must be somewhere else doing it or waiting
for the weather to change and experts don't wait around much.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>>Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts who
>>>are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture that most
>>>experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something better.
>>The experts used to be here.
>Just in case we're not on the same page, that's precisely what I was
>saying too.

I'm sorry! I probably rushed through your post without catching
everything.

In article <66a4642e$2$1439830$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com>,
Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>
>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>
>For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
>Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.

Please move this thread to alt.drugs.i.am.totaly.wasted and rec.ponds
where it belongs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>> Let's translate that to ``the experts are not here''. The experts
>> who are in social networks seem to be a minority, so I conjecture
>> that most experts are off the radar, perhaps waiting for something
>> better.
>
> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> Tim Berners Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project to
> the alt.hypertext newsgroup. Marc Andreessen announced Netscape in
> comp.infosystems.www.users. The launch of AltaVista was announced in
> biz.digital.announce. "Uncle Bob" wrote in comp.objects. Greg Egan
> asked about the science for his SF novels in sci.physics.research.
> Dennis Ritchie wrote in comp.lang.c. They just disappeared.

The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.

A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
contribution to a discussion is negative. If you have absolutist ideas
about free speech then, or are part of the problem, that may be what you
want. But if you actually want to get something useful done there are
better options available.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
.. . .
>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.

BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.

>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>contribution to a discussion is negative.

Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> In article <66a4642e$2$1439830$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com>,
> Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 7/25/24 8:38 AM, D wrote:
>>>> Rubbish! When I'm out in bars and night clubs, I get loads of women by
>>>> telling them I'm a regular usenet user!
>>>
>>> Way to go, guy! I assume you also flash a wad.
>>
>> For bonus points, tell them you enjoy a good campaign of Dungeons and
>> Dragons. Girls go nuts for guys that like D&D and Usenet too.
>
> Please move this thread to alt.drugs.i.am.totaly.wasted and rec.ponds
> where it belongs.
> --scott
>

It is too late... the virus has already escaped! ;)

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> . . .
>> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>> contribution to a discussion is negative.
>
> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>

That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
continue? That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.

As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: UTF-8, 35 lines --]
>
>
>
> On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>> The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>> The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>> can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>>
>>> A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>> contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their
>> own filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them
>> out of your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond
>> to them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too!
>> Heck, you can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>> But it’s not like there’s a central authority doing that for you.
>>
>
> That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
> out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
> continue?

You don't need to register a new account to nymshift on USENET anymore.
When USENET accounts went commercial (or free for all) instead of being
tied to one's college/business account it became trivial to post as any
name you like, all from the same account.

But as most users are unaware of how to do so, most users don't
nymshift, and so killfiles do work.

The problem is that many people don't want to be bothered with managing
their own personal killfile and would rather that work be offloaded to
"the moderators" (which is mostly what they get on the centralized
forums) so they don't have to bother with it.

> That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
> register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.
>
> As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.

Because most folks don't nym-shift on a regular basis.

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
> . . .
>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>
> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>
>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>
> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their own
> filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them out of
> your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond to
> them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too! Heck, you
> can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!

My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
>for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
guy. I even took the Usenet approach and ran with it for my news fix.
I whipped up this gnarly little Python script that scrapes headlines
from all these news sites and wire services, then it goes HAM
on filtering everything. You can bet your last avocado toast
if there's a peep about Kim K, that noise ain't making it to my
eyeballs! At the end of the day, my code spits out this sweet little
digest with all the stories that made the cut. If anything slips
through the cracks that I'm not vibing with, I just tighten up the
filter. It's like, how do people even function without this setup?
It's as essential as my morning cold brew from Blue Bottle, I swear.

On 7/27/24 1:01 PM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>>>The experts used to be here. Linux was announced in comp.os.minix.
>> . . .
>>>The ‘expert’ conversations are still happening, just not on Usenet. You
>>>can find them in mailing lists, blogs, issue trackers, papers, etc.
>>
>> BTW: I shouldn't be calling Linus Torvalds and the others
>> I mentioned “experts.” That would be a serious downgrade for
>> them! These folks are top-tier innovators. But yeah, there
>> were definitely experts back in the Usenet days, and some
>> of them are still around in certain Newsgroups.
>>
>>>A core problem with Usenet is that you can’t exclude people whose net
>>>contribution to a discussion is negative.
>>
>> Or maybe the real issue is the folks who think you can't just block
>> certain people out? Yeah, Usenet expects everyone to manage their own
>> filters. If someone’s bugging you, you can totally filter them out of
>> your feed. And if it drives you nuts to see how others respond to
>> them, just find a newsreader that lets you filter that too! Heck, you
>> can filter posts that have a specific word pattern in them!
>
> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
> for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.

That's the GOOD part about usenet. You can look at the list of threads
and authors and easily decide what you want to read. When you're done,
mark the rest 'read'. Simple. After a few decades you actually know
how to do this stuff.

I've only killfiled two people, and I think one of them is actually dead
now.

--
Cheers, Bev
All bleeding eventually stops.

On 26 Jul 2024 22:18:48 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> I'm not really sure whether a HTML parser
> library would be helpful or just a pointless extra layer of complexity.
> So far I've just used regular expressions for scraping webpages.

I learned about BeautifulSoup early on, and never looked back. I use it
for all my web-scraping projects nowadays.

By the way, this is the kind of discussion you could not have on a
platform like Discord. The last time I was on there, the server Ts&Cs had
prohibitions against talking about web-scraping, since so many websites
didn’t like it.

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Rich wrote:

>> That's what I thought too, but perhaps he meant that even if you filter
>> out, the person can just register a new account, change their handle, and
>> continue?
>
> You don't need to register a new account to nymshift on USENET anymore.
> When USENET accounts went commercial (or free for all) instead of being
> tied to one's college/business account it became trivial to post as any
> name you like, all from the same account.
>
> But as most users are unaware of how to do so, most users don't
> nymshift, and so killfiles do work.
>
> The problem is that many people don't want to be bothered with managing
> their own personal killfile and would rather that work be offloaded to
> "the moderators" (which is mostly what they get on the centralized
> forums) so they don't have to bother with it.

Very interesting! I thougt the people/companies who provide usenet
access would have done something against that, so interesting to hear
that they have not.

>> That does raise the bar though, since it is a bit of a hassle to
>> register a new account every single time you would like to harass someone.
>>
>> As for blocking or killfiling, works great for me.
>
> Because most folks don't nym-shift on a regular basis.

This is the truth!

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good candidate
>> for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>
> That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
> guy. I even took the Usenet approach and ran with it for my news fix.
> I whipped up this gnarly little Python script that scrapes headlines
> from all these news sites and wire services, then it goes HAM
> on filtering everything. You can bet your last avocado toast
> if there's a peep about Kim K, that noise ain't making it to my
> eyeballs! At the end of the day, my code spits out this sweet little
> digest with all the stories that made the cut. If anything slips
> through the cracks that I'm not vibing with, I just tighten up the
> filter. It's like, how do people even function without this setup?
> It's as essential as my morning cold brew from Blue Bottle, I swear.
>

Interesting! Do you have that script available somewhere? Would be
interesting to have a look and see if there's something in there that I
can use myself.

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>> My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>> candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>
> That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
> guy.

Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote or quoted:
>>>My point is that the “manage your own filters” model is a good
>>>candidate for why almost everybody (expert or not) left Usenet.
>>That's a trip, 'cause I'm totally the "roll your own filters" kind of
>>guy.
>Do you get that for most people it looks like a waste of time?

But for me, the whole point is just to save time! I used to get
tangled up in reading news about vanity or trivial stuff that had
zero relevance to me. There was this one news source where I'd
skim through about 40 headlines with article descriptions daily,
and end up reading stories about some bartender's teenage years.
Now, my system only shows me about two or three headlines from the
same source. I only need a fraction of the time. Sure, I had to put
in some time upfront to write my Python script, but it was worth it.