Python Forum

[John Bokma]

"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps at start.no> writes:

> * John Bokma, on 04.06.2010 20:19:
>> Steven D'Aprano<steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au>  writes:
>>
>>> But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically
>>> equals "better".
>>
>> I don't think that was the point.
>>
>> Anyway, not everbody can pick a provider, there are plenty of places
>> that have only one or maybe two. And if that's the choice and neither
>> carries Usenet you have to pay for Usenet like I do. Note that I
>> consider it well worth the 10 euros I pay for it.
>>
>> To me, it looks like the use of Usenet for text is on the
>> decline. I've been away from Usenet for like a year or so and could see
>> quite a difference. More and more ISPs in my experience are dropping
>> Usenet from their services. Mind, I think that the number of users on
>> Usenet (text only) still exceeds the number when I first used Usenet
>> (back in the early 90's). But usage is on the decline as far as I can
>> tell. On top of that I see people I know from Usenet now quite active on
>> Stack Overflow and sister sites.
>>
>> Finally, I have to disagree with your disagreement (which is just a
>> personal experience) based on my personal experience: it's harder to
>> find an ISP that carries Usenet. And I have experience with, oh, just 3
>> countries where I have been living in for the past 10 years.
>
> True.
>
> While Usenet traffic is still exponentially increasing, most of that's
> in binary groups, and it's spam.
>
> I think much of the decline of Usenet is correlated with an increase
> of laws designed to limit free speech and support all kinds
> surveillance.

In my experience, as in people I know who've left Usenet, reasons for
leaving Usenet are:

 1) spam, number 1 culprit being Google.
 2) newbies who don't care about posting guidelines
 3) regulars in their ivory towers

Other reasons:

 4) MFA (Made for AdSense) sites that pretend to be a forum but just
    harvest all data from Usnet
 5) trolls and kooks.

> It started, as I see it, back in the early 90's with
> Playboy attempting to sue anyone who used the Lena picture in photo
> processing tests etc. (it's the standard image for that). They failed
> in that particular endeavour, but did succeed in shutting down
> thousands of sites worldwide displaying Playboy pictures.

I know of the use of Lena. And to be honest, I agree with Playboy that
they have the copyright. Some of the articles published on image
processing end up behind a paywall or in a book. And I don't think the
authors will be very happy if I convert their work in PDFs and offer it
as free download on my site. Everybody wants a free ride until they have
to create and maintain the rides in their own precious time with their
own money.

[...]

> Until some replacement for Usenet appears, online discussion will in
> general be effectively /local/, unknown to all but the parties
> currently using a given web forum, and it will in general not be
> archived.

I like Stackoverflow and its sister sites a lot.

-- 
John Bokma                                                               j3b

Hacking & Hiking in Mexico -  http://johnbokma.com/
http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development