| Anyone else lament the fact that moderated forums have all but killed | Usenet?
They've taken some traffic away from Usenet, but have hardly killed it. | It's abundantly obvious from the decline of traffic volume in | respective groups over the past couple of years in particular, that | Usenet is inevitably headed the way of Fidonet.
Usenet is dying. Film at 11! | Glossy forum interfaces with an ease of browser access Gumby can use | are undoubtedly THE attraction. The downside is the politically | correct and commercially conflicting moderation bit stifling | dissenting opinion and truth in exchange.
Gumby can access Usenet. It's not rocket science.
As for the moderation, that's generally a good thing. In fact, the lack of an effective way to moderate (yes, I know about moderated groups on Usenet. I even moderate one. I also know about the problems) is probably the main reason that forums are gaining users so much faster than Usenet.
For example, this post of yours is offtopic here. It would probably be removed from a RC forum, and rightfully so. All the political posts that we see here definately would get removed, immediately. And the spam (which we admitantly don't see too much of here) would be gone too ...
Another advantage of forums is how easy it is to create new forums. Creating new newsgroups is quite complicated, and it doesn't happen often at all.
And then people like how they can use cutesy icons, add in-line pictures, etc. And the forum administrators like how they can control things, and how they can make money off of it by selling accounts and advertising.
Usenet has it's advantages too. There's no one site that if it goes down, everything just disappears. No overzealous moderator can ruin a discussion. Discussions are archived forever (practically anways), as opposed to having discussions expired at various times, depending on the site. The interface is up to you, and is the same for every newsgroup, as opposed to every forum with it's own different interface. And Usenet is fast -- I can read everything I want to very quickly. Can't do that with any forum ...
I haven't given up on Usenet yet. But as far as this group goes, the biggest problem are the regulars -- the ones who feel free to post political stuff here. People need to think before they post ...
| But to hunt beef, one has to migrate with the grazing herd...or set up | one's own grain fed forced bulk feeding lot.
There's still hunting here ...
Of course, this still isn't very R/C related, so ...
Here, in Austin, TX, it's like 60 degrees, no wind, sunny. Absolutely beautiful. I don't even have to work (and I usually work on sundays.) I need to go fly! Alas, my wife is out shopping, and I've got the kids ...
Their grandma got them a R/C car, one of the cheap ones. It didn't work. Oddly enough, after they played with it for a few days, beating on it and such, it started working! Somehow I don't think that would work well with my broken planes, however ...