I’ve been setting up my new mail client (Thunderbird for Mac OS X) and just for the heck of it, I set up the news-reader part. It took forever to download all of the newsgroups out there. Tens of thousands.
I started looking at some of the newsgroups and they were littered with spam and junk messages trying to sell me stuff. I remember usergroups to be a font of hard to find information and like-minded people. Has message boards like SDMB totally replaced the newsgroups of old? Is there any reason to spend time searching newsgoups anymore? There must be some sort of specialized information to be had that only exist on newsgroups.
I sort of miss the old days when you needed ten different programs to access all of the types of information on the web. Everything seemed dark and mysterious. It was really special when you came across something obscure. Are those days gone?
I still use newsgroups a fair amount. I do so primarily to download binaries, but there are also some groups out there such as sci.lang.japan that aren’t flooded with spam and have intelligent, informed regulars.
I go to aus.rail sometimes. I guess that’s pretty specialised and there’s not a lot of spam. It’s true that there is an Australian railway messageboard which is bigger, and you could argue that this has effectively superceded the newsgroup, but still sometimes the newsgroup is worth visiting for me.
I also have a shitty ISP and I go to the help newsgroup run by other victims of this ISP because it’s more useful than the official help site.
I wasn’t on the internet in the heyday of newsgroups, so I’m not an “old hand”, but I always set up my newsreader whenever I’ve changed machines or email clients, and I don’t see any reason ever to stop doing that.
I only use usenet now with Google’s search interface. The massively high noise to signal ratio present in most newsgroups makes it pointless using a proper newsreader.
I never post anymore. You usually find better informed individuals and get a higher degree of sensible responses from individual bulletin boards. Like this one. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but I doubt I’ll ever be tempted back.
I’m a programmer, and I get tremendous value from reading and accasionally posting programming questions on usenet. It’s hard for me to imagine how people programmed before usenet (and the web).
From time to time I’ll drop by alt.fan.cecil-adams just to see what’s happening there. I’m amazed at the activity over there. I wonder if this is where all the banned posters and non-payers end up.
While I don’t consider myself “old”, I’ve been on the net since 1993, and I rememeber that newsgroups were a great way to talk to people about any and all subjects.
+MDI is right about the moderated groups still being pretty good, but for the groups that are unmoderated, I think you’re better off finding a messageboard dealing with that subject.
The amont of spam and other crap seemed to vary depending on the newsgroup, but there are so many a**holes out there that have decided to make everyone else’s lives miserable by constantly posting to a newsgroup, I found I was spending more time setting up kill filters and deleting other crap than I was spending actually reading the messages.
Some of the computer help newsgroups are better than MBs. I read two of the many microsoft.public.windows, ME.general and inetexplorer.ie6.outlooke express. They’ve cued me in as to a recent defective critical download patch issued by MS, for example.
Well, I do know the folks over at alt.fan.cecil-adams would be likely to be asking “are web-based discussion forums worth it yet?” But as mentioned, it varies per your specific aims, and usually the moderateds are better.
One thing that does seem to be happenning is that many access providers do not make too much of an effort to keep up a decent Usenet feed, in many cases outsourcing it to supernews, newshosting.com, or some such other dedicated news-server host, and often (e.g. company servers) just leaving it off altogether.
My husband still swears by rec.audio.pro. Those guys know damn near anything you want to know about music/sound production.
I used to subscribe to a few ancient history groups but it was pretty spammy and filled with new-agey types trying to argue for the Atlantis Did Everything position and I got a little sick of it.
alt.fan.tolkien as well as rec.arts.books.tolkien are pretty good although you’ll see a good deal of cross-posting between those two.
But as mentioned, it varies per your specific aims, and usually the moderateds are better.