Re: Is RMGD Dying?

On Jun 12, 8:17 pm, "Neil X." <nei...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are almost zero newcomers

This is a fairly recent phenomenon. Up through 2004, there was a
regular parade of newcomers. Some stuck, most didn't, which I think
is par for the course on usenet.

I think this is because the Dead and things related are far less
relevant than they were before, so who's dropping by and for what
reason?

> It can be pretty harsh for newbies.

I agree. I think this phenomenon has grown markedly worse over the
past 6-7 years. Mostly, that's because the newbies are different now
than they used to be. When I first started to post here in 2000, no
one ragged on me for anything I wrote. The main reason for that is I
had periodically read the group for several years before making my
first post, so I was far from clueless about the culture here; I made
no faux pas to rile folks up.

I left around 98-99 and didn't show up again until 12/05, so I can't
say anything about the interim years, but I don't think newbs are
treated any worse than they use to be in my first go round here.

Like you, I checked things out before diving in, so I was never
subject to a full frontal assualt, but is sure as *** did happen like
clockwork when the gameball newbs showed up. As it should. If you
can't take the time to figure out what door you are walking in, you
don't deserve any slack. But beyond the silly Barton Hall ***, no one
around here gives newbs much of a hard time and nobody plays "deader
than thou." Unless they come in with that "I thought Deadheads were
supposed to be kind" ***, along with the "what's with all the heiney
sex and politics? This is supposed to be a group about the Dead so
people should stay on topic" kind of stuff, then it's pretty easy
going.

I belonged to another group years back that was absolutely vicious to
newbies and the li'l gang of regulars who fancied themselves the elite
took sadistic glee in wolf-packing them and aggresively chasing them
off. I thought that sucked big time and got into lots of *** with
them.

Folks who start posting now are far less likely to have any idea of
usenet etiquette and mores, basic things like reading the usenet group
you wish to post to for a while before starting to post. I think
Google is primarily responsible for this. When one actually had to
learn about usenet, go and figure out how obtain a newsreader and sign
up with a news server, as opposed to just clicking on a weblink, folks
were more likely to do a little research to figure out what they were
getting themselves into. So now we get more folks who have no idea
what it's all about, and the likelihood of major culture clashes
increases dramatically.

All in all, I think rmgd's pretty benign for newbs. What was the last
culture clash we had around here?

Fred

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