Re: Nobody proposing new uk newsgroups - why ?

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:37:14 -0000, Keith Lawrence
<false@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "Chris Croughton" <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
>
>> > From figures obtained from
>> > http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/newsserver/hierarchy-stats/uk/ -
>
>> Which figures? Number of newsgroups, posts, total volume? And how do
>> you actually get to that page? I can't see it linked from their other
>> pages (and no indication of what the stats actually represent -- do they
>> include control messages as posts, or messages which have been
>> cancelled?).
>
> I was using the posts figures.

Well, that's a start. Fred was using the number of newsgroups as a
metric, so you changed the statistics without saying that you were using
different ones.

And I repeat, how do you get there from their web site, and is there any
information about what those statistics actually represent? How are
cosposts counted, for instance (as one post, as one post per newsgroup?)

>> > 2003 -> 2004 : A 13% decline
>> > Nov 04 -> Nov 05 : A 17% decline
>> > Nov 00 -> Nov 05 : A 36% decline!
>>
>> In what? Not newsgroups, certainly:
>>
>> November 2000: 369 groups
>> November 2001: 398 groups (+29)
> ...
>
>> Interestingly, Control's checkgroups list is 424 groups, so I'm
>> not sure how reliable their numbers are...
>
> Oh dear, even though the figures would only seem to be for 98.5% of the
> available groups they are obviously seriously flawed and can not in any way
> be indicative of a trend. All of those missing posts must be in the 1.5% of
> groups (6) that are missing! Please tell us which groups these are so that
> we can all go and see these lost posts.

Since their figures show a growth in newsgroup where there was actually
a decline, how seriously can I take any of their figures? Perhaps there
was actually a growth of unique articles posted but their records don't
show it. My point is that those stats are provably wrong in at least
one of the metrics, and so are useless.

>> In numbers of posts and volume, yes it has declined pretty steadily
>> according to that site. However, there's no analysis of what type of
>> posts have been going through, quite possibly the amount of spam has
>> decreased or the cancels have been better.
>
> I must go and tell my mail admins that - a massive DECREASE in spam since
> around 2,000. Either that or usenet is a magical spam free medium that has
> somehow bucked the international international internet trend of being
> swamped with spam.

What have mail admins to do with spam? Oh, you are confusing spam with
UCE...

I didn't say that Usenet is spam free, I said that I have seen less of
it recently than in the past. That may be because I use NIN and they
are good at cancelling it (see my comment about cancels).

>> But note that the total news volume has been decreasing since
>> 1999 as well. How many unique posters in each year? The site
>> doesn't say. Perhaps people are just posting less, having less
>> time because of competing activities like LiveJournal (I know that's
>> true for a lot of my friends, I wouldn't be surprised if
>> it's true for myself as well).
>
> Again usenet bucks the trend! My web server statistics and the incredible
> growth in web based forums over the past three years show a completely
> different story - people have the time, but they have no time and use for
> usenet, so IMHO you cannot blame society either.

Yes, as I have said the vast majority of computer users these days are
not interested in Usenet. They wouldn't be interested if you paid them,
is isn't interesting to them. The vast majority aren't interested in
the Internet at all except as a way to get at music and porn (and
games), and since uk.* doesn't carry binaries they won't get much of
either there.

>> > Now that 36% decline since 2000 should be put into the context of the UK
>> > National Statistics Office (see
>> > http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=8)...
>
>> Not relevant. As we've already said, new people aren't interested in
>> Usenet (well, possibly 1% might be, but I don't know any of them).
>
> Q.E.D. You are begining to get the point Chris.

No, I'm not 'beginning' to get it, I said many posts ago that in my
opinion Usenet has reached its peak and will then drop back to the level
at which only the text enthusiasts will still be using it. And that
this will be a Good Thing(tm), getting rid of the people who only used
it because it was the only thing around will improve the signal-to-noise
ratio.

What I don't see is that this is a 'problem'.

>> I notice that even the Cambridge site doesn't mention Usenet
>> on most of its pages, although it does mention email and WWW
>> on most of them.
>
>> Yes, maybe some of the people who joined because they wanted a 'chat'
>> system have left. I don't regard that as a bad thing. Maybe some of
>> the AOLers posting a complete thread to add "me too" have left. Or some
>> trolls. Does anyone really miss them?
>
> Chris my friend - no matter how much you wriggle, no matter how much you
> rubbish and spin the basic figures, no matter how much you shoot the
> messenger (go ahead, I'm immune to it!)... you are deluding yourself and
> others if you fail to admit that there might, just might, be a decline in
> usenet.

I don't fail to admit that there might be a decine in Usenet, I (a)
don't think that the figures prove it (certainly not in the way fred was
claiming) and (b) don't think that such a decline would actually be a
problem. I don't buy into fred's "it 'should' expand" philosophy.

> Do I have the answers? No, but at least I recognise the problem. I think
> that the only thing that we can do is manage that decline and possibly slow
> it a little. But the very first step in being able to do that is at least
> admitting that we may have a problem here, we don't even seem to be at that
> stage yet with many people seeming to be in denial and pretending that there
> is no problem at all!

There is no problem, unless you are one of the few people who makes
money from raw quantity of Usenet traffic. How many real posters (not
trolls, ones who actually contribute) do you know who have left Usenet
in the last year? I know of a few who have died.

> I also think that the estimate of usenet lasting a generation is rather
> optimistic, I tend to side with those who give it 10 years, possibly even
> less. I predict that within two to three years you will start seeing
> mainstream ISP's simply abandoning general usernet services, not enough
> people interested to justify the cost. From there, having been starved of
> new entrants, it will contract to subscription services and private servers,
> back to the roots as somebody put it.

As I put it, in fact. Yes, and I don't see this as much of a loss.
Lose all of the binaries for a start, and what's left can be run by
private servers. And then it will attract new people who find that the
newsgroups are manageable and actually contain useful information and
people who aren't burnt out by all the idiots posting complete threads
with "me too" at the bottom.

> Once there you are at the point of no return. It will contract even further
> as subscription services drop out (no new entrants...)

It only takes a few hundred people to reduce the cost of a managed
server to under 10 quid a year. And such a server can easily handle
thousands using NNTP (text only, no binaries), and is accessible from
anywhere on the net. That's the difference between when Usenet started
(or even when Demon started the TAM accounts) and now, almost all
servers and a large proportion of users are online 24/7 with decent
speed links. In 1992 this wasn't the case, every ISP had to have their
own news server because their links couldn't handle the bandwidth and
many servers were only connected for a few hours a day (when Usenet
started the connections were mostly point-to-point connected on demand
through telephone links), now the only reason to have multiple news
servers is for redundancy.

> and become
> exclusively an enthusiast led tiny minority legacy service. Then everybody
> can sit around, counting the number of totally empty groups, and harp(er)ing
> back to the goode olde days of usenet at its peak and wondering where it all
> went wrong.

If no one wants it eventually then yes, it will become as popular as the
horse and buggy. I don't see many people sitting round and bemoaning
the loss of the horse and buggy because of all the cars.

More likely it will become like bicycles, which are making a comeback
because of all the heavy car usage blocking things up. When the web
forums become as saturated as Usenet is now people will start looking
for a simpler method.

> See you there Chris?

I doubt that I'll still be alive by the time it dies.

Chris C
.

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