Re: UKHA usenet group

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@y..., "Ian Lowe" <ian@w...> wrote:
> Personally, I say screw 'em.
>
> The Usenet Admins are presiding over a dwindling empire, the enitre
usenet
> system is falling down round their ears, and the egotistical crap
we had
> when we last tried gives you a good idea why...

free.uk and others are trying t  change the system but unfortunately
not all ISPs will propogate their groups otherwise free.uk.home-
automation would be online t day!

>From what I have read, the uk. committee is trying t  seperate itself
a little from the old style big 8 rules and open it up more but
whether this comes to anything or not is yet to be seen. IIRC a
couple of the committee have resigned after their minimum year
instead of the usual three year term over the whole red tape stuff.

> Personally, I Like Usenet, like the maillist,

I like Usenet. I don't mind mailing lists but high volume mailing
lists can be a pain. I prefer a mailing list to be a complementary
system rather than a primary one.

> and hate IRC with a passion.
> It's a hateful collection of the most anti-social people on the
planet, none
> of whom will help no matter how nciely you ask, and one of the few
places
> where technical people will openly sneer at those who don't
instantly "just
> know" all of the (frankly obtuse) commands.
>
> I will, on principle, not use IRC until the last one of the current
moronic
> inhabitants of #irchelp is in their cold, dead, grave.

Depends where you go Ian. The huge networks, Dalnet, Efnet, etc are
like that. Smaller ones are usually far better. This is one of the
reasons I got int  running an IRC network a while back. A Usenet
group I was part of began an IRC channel on a small network but
unfortunately server reliability was a problem since they were only a
couple months old and the admins were not online when problems
occurred. Changing network seemed t  be the only solution t  this but
t  avoid all the problems of the larger networks, I partnered up with
a couple of the group t  share costs on a server and ultimately we
ended up running the entire network.

One of the main things we do as opers was help people with even the
most basic stuff. Often this can be a frustrating experience and the
temptation t  d  it for them and e.g. just tell them their nickname
password and what t  type is sometimes difficult t  overcome, but
long term spending the sometimes hours with someone getting them to
do it themselves pays back later. We created a very strict policy for
such things though so as any oper was added, they got one chance and
any treatment such as that which you have discovered in #irchelp on
whichever networks you have tried lost them their oline. It works
very well.

The other thing about small networks is very like this mailing list,
most people know each other from Network admin down t  the most basic
users s  there is not a great sense of hierarchy and opers are never
unapproachable.

One thing that was weird was going from Usenet t  IRC. Bascially the
entire core group moved t  IRC and the newsgroup really died off.
Conversation was rarely, if ever, on topic but it had not really been
that on topic in the newsgroup. The newsgroup itself recovered with a
number of lurkers becoming the new core group, but ultimately, the
IRC users started t  contribute t  the main group again, albeit in a
more on topic manner. As a group, I think it did us good. It gave us
a platform for real time chat of all the off t pic stuff we had
previously discussed on the newsgroup and eventually our on topic
contributions stood out more for the reduction in newsgroup off t pic
traffic. The group as a whole actually spent more time t gether and
projects which had long been fantasy began t  come t gether as real
time chats finally got where newsgroup chats never had.

This list works very like every Usenet group I have ever been part
of. There is a core group which is often difficult t  become part of
particularly when the core posters are very involved in an off t pic
thread and a newbie is looking for help. They may get the help but
sometimes it seems like the "size of my car exhaust" is far more
important discussion :) At least in a newsgroup, the threading of
discussions lessens the seeming ignorance of the group t  new
messages.

My main gripe with mailing lists. Well to be honest only this one,
since I have never been part of a mailing list which has such a high
number of messages, is the lack of threading capabilities in email
programs. I usually have to use the web interface for this group
since the yahoo email headers mess with the mail server both at home
and at work for some unknown reason (began as the number of messages
increased but likely yahoo changed something at the same time) the
lack of threading in the web interface is unforgivable.

Anyway, IRC is not s  bad if you consider networks like individual
usenet groups or even mailing lists. In all situations, RTFM and
derision are common especially from members of the core group (not a
comment against the ukha group) but others (such as this one) are as
friendly as they come. I actually took great pleasure in telling the
original author of one of the IRC services programs I reviewed some
time back ,in response t  his RTFM answer t  a technical query, that
he WTFM (wrote the "fine" manual) since what he claimed was in
there
was not. Their support was primarily a mailing list and the worst I
have ever been part of. But peaking at maybe 25 messages a day and
averaging a couple, was ideal for that format.

ukha peaks and these days even the averages, even if I could utilise
the email format, does IMO need t  progress beyond the mailing list
t  grow. When Nigel left, I did expect that there would be more
reaction t  a long term member and contributor leaving, but the group
and the traffic has continued t  grow.

Mark.




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