The post was by none other than Mark Asher. I have loved the man ever since.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&frame=right&th=b9d594924797e3ec&seekm=68u7tj%24856%241%40newsin-1.starnet.net#link1

A cool timeline of the 20 years of posts.
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html

Chet

Heh, you beat me to it. The best part about the archive is that now you can read the complete Cleve Blakemore:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:cleve+author:blakemore&num=100&hl=en&scoring=d&filter=0

There's only 141, so I think I'm missing some.

I had dim memories of games being sold at OMM. Finally some confirmation. So what happened to the whole game selling endeavor? Did micropayments kill that too?

It's hard to imagine the candor and tone of OMM being compatible with sales. Of anything. Except possibly fat chicks in party hats.

I tried some searches on my old email addresses & found a ton of stuff. I forgot what a Usenet geek I was. It is usually used in regard to old nude pictures, but they ain't kidding when they say the Internet is forever.

Here are two early usenet posts. Looks like I was in my usual fighting form !

---

Quote:

From: Sean Tudor ([email protected])
Subject: Re: Quake SHOCKING
Newsgroups: alt.games.quake, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, rec.games.computer.quake.misc
Date: 1996/06/25

[email protected] (Mark Alexander) wrote:

>>2. Explosions look really poxy. So what if they are modelled in 3d?
>>They simply look shithouse, the grenade explosions look like a
>>starfield from a 1990 ASM demo. Yuck.
>Run it in a decent resolution :-)

Sorry to rain on your parade but even at 1024 x 768 the explosions still look like pixelated 1980's crap. id can and should have done a lot better than this.

---

---

Quote:

From: Sean Tudor ([email protected])
Subject: Re: COMMAND & CONQUER : Why only 320 x 200 ?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Date: 1995/09/13

[email protected] (Champion Andrew) wrote:

>You MORON!!!!! You are complaining about that??? Geez, DO NOT give them
>another reason to delay the game!!! Who the hell do u think u are???

Great comeback mate. With posts like these who needs to study the English language.

On the other hand if you have anything *constructive* to post then I might be interested.
-------------------------------
Sean Tudor

---

It's good to know people have been hurling invective at each other over the Internet for decades now.

Our time spent selling games was not nearly as lucrative as programming. It made no sense to sell games unless we could have really low prices, it was easy in the beginning. At that time, games weren't being sold at heavy discounts at best buy etc. Our profit margin shrunk and then what really killed it was, we started selling too many. It started taking up too much time for too little return.

I miss it. I loved the whole process and the feeling of mailing someone something they were really looking forward to. The day we sold 50 redline racers or the whole iwar thing.

Chet

"It's good to know people have been hurling invective at each other over the Internet for decades now."

Man's inhumanity to man soldiers on. It really does bring a tear to my eye. And by the way, eat me.

"I miss it. I loved the whole process and the feeling of mailing someone something they were really looking forward to. The day we sold 50 redline racers or the whole iwar thing."

Yeah, I wondered what happened to all that. Thanks for the background. Not as lucrative as Fat Chicks in Party Hats, I take it?

I just found some of my old posts to rec.music.misc circa 1989. Jesus H. I am quitting the Interanet forever.

Heh -- yeah, I want to erase some of mine. Fortunately I had the wisdom to never once post in a porno group. That was good because that anti-Derek Smart Internet kook Bill Huffman once tried to analyze my posting habits. He was sorely disappointed that I didn't post in alt.underwear.erotica or something like that.

Chet, I was more than happy to give OMM a boost! I also did something similar for Gone Gold back when it wasn't so well known. Those were the days. I have less influence now writing for the mags than I did back when I was a Usenet flamer. :)

Critical Bill...Cleve...ah, some good times. BTW, Grimoire has gone into beta for about the eleventh time now. I remember downloading a demo of it years ago. Wish I'd kept it.

It is amazing how much hasn't changed. Here is a thread that included posts from Mark Asher, Desslock, and me.

Here I am complaining about changes to CGW after the ZD takeover, including complaining about adding the star ratings.

And here I am being a grog.

Now I know I'm old, because I've started repeating myself.

Looks like my earliest might have been 1994; I did manage to find one from csipg.action that I'm pretty sure I didn't write but is attributed to me (hell I never even had a killfile, much less threaten people with it).

--- Alan

I migrated from CServe to Usenet around '94-'95. It took awhile to drop CServe. Now I seem to have mostly migrated from Usenet to message boards.

I wonder what the oldest Old Salt post is? Probably one where he's lecturing some AOL newbie on newsgroup protocol.

Well I found some 1991 posts. Holy crap, my early stuff is embarassing. Hell some of my 1998 posts are embarassing. My past is embarassing.

--- Alan

> I migrated from CServe to Usenet around '94-'95. It took awhile to drop CServe. Now I seem to have mostly migrated from Usenet to message boards.

Interesting how I used to think that Usenet was the end-all to message boarding; pretty much gave up BBS's after that except for one local writing BBS. Now I find message boards to be a lot more helpful and direct, if you have the right people reading and commenting on them. Don't even have time for newsgroups any more, though I do occasionally read them.

--- Alan

I only go back to 1995.

First game I ever publicly ridiculed on the Internet, Loaded for the PSX. 7 years later and I am still using the same jokes. I suck.

Chet

This is also from the first ibm pc review in 1981!

"The thing is totally modular; even the I/O cards are separate!
For $ 1,565 you get a keyboard and logic unit with 16K RAM and
a Basic interpreter in 40K ROM. A cassette interface is built
in, I think; but no diskette or monitor at this price -- you
use your TV set. Of course you can add one or two minidiskettes,
lots more memory (16-64k increments), a B&W monitor (no color
monitor was mentioned), RS-232C interface card, matrix printer,
a joystick/paddle interface (but you have to buy somebody else's
joysticks and paddles); and maybe the kitchen sink. A "business
configuration" with 64K, dual diskettes, printer, and "color
graphics" goes for about $ 4,500."

Four thousand dollars!

etc

'Well I found some 1991 posts. Holy crap, my early stuff is embarassing. Hell some of my 1998 posts are embarassing. My past is embarassing.'

It's amazing how much everyone's writing has improved. Is there anyone who's *not* embarassed about their old postings?

Going through my old posts and running over all of my OGR ones, then the ones talking about me leaving OGR -- that's embarassing. I didn't write the post well and started a great big flame fest because of it.. Sean, Mark, Critical Bill, Bill Abner, and Krud make their respective entrances at some point :)

Hell I can't even remember the exact reasons why I left. I sat around for about a month, maybe two, totally disinterested in the net -- burned out I guess is the best way to describe it -- and suddenly realized that I needed more money than what I was pulling in from OGR, which was less and less as I was getting more and more burned out. I remembered that Gamespot had given me an offer a year before, and decided to take them up on it.

My first mistake was that I didn't tell anybody about it -- they bought me a plane ticket to Frisco and I just went. My second mistake was that while there I accessed my OGR email from OGR itself. Doug I think was online at the time and quickly discovered where I was logged in from -- gamespot.com -- and they quickly kicked me out. I never got a chance to explain what was happening but I suppose their reaction was pretty natural. My post didn't help matters since I had stuff just laying around to do during my burnt-out period that I didn't bother doing.

It'd be easy to say that I left because OGR was going downhill, but I just don't remember it that way. There was the huge controversy over the infamous Artifical Intelligence preview, the print magazine flop, and a bunch of other things, but I don't think any of that had any real bearing on my decision to leave. At times I think to myself that my leaving is what caused the downhill slide, but my ego isn't big enough for that. Maybe I was pissed that I didn't get asked to move to Connecticut, but I can't say for certain whether or not I got offered.

Ugh, sorry about going into that little diatribe, just brought back a lot of memories seeing those posts. Kinda therapeutic (sp?) I guess, don't think I've ever written about it.

--- Alan

Heh -- I remember that stuff Alan. I was just sticking my nose in like I was wont to do back then (and still do). The beauty of the Internet is we can flame each other on Monday and be best of friends on Tuesday.

Having our Usenet posts archived though is a bit like that "permanent record" business our parents warned us about with high school grades.

The Scooter Stupid Post Saga:

This was when I took stupid posts seriously, before I learned to just ignore them:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:ThierryX%40pacbell.net&hl=en&rnum=3&selm=33fee5a3.4419671%40news.pacbell.net

My attempt to jump in the whole "mags reviews are bought by advertisers" debate:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:ThierryX%40pacbell.net&hl=en&rnum=5&selm=33fb273f.1719688%40news.pacbell.net

Not only is Cleve and Wizardry 8 involved in this post, but it's one example of the phase in my life where every post was somehow a plug for an article I wrote. God, I was a little advertising whore back then:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:ThierryX%40pacbell.net&start=10&hl=en&rnum=12&selm=33e2c42d.3416796%40news.pacbell.net

I'm not replying to wumpus here, am I?
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&start=20&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1997&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=26&selm=3483fdb5.99055716%40news.mindspring.com

Jesus christ, I'm remembering someone from a Syndicate Wars bulletin board on AOL!
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&start=30&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1997&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=35&selm=34802392.25258217%40news.mindspring.com

Taling about Hanson in the action newsgroup, in a thread about Prey of all things. Hey, whatever happened to Meghan Jenks (I knew she got married and went to some dotcommy thing, but that's about it)?
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&start=40&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1997&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=47&selm=347a9a53.33201576%40news.mindspring.com

This is me saying sorry after having the Entermedia guy yell at me:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&start=50&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1997&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=53&selm=34792844.10694193%40news.mindspring.com

Look! First post in which I interact with Mark Asher!
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Mark+Asher+author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=3&selm=339362da.2640932%40news.pacbell.net&filter=0

My first post involving Tom Chick, and I'm defending him to boot! I was some sort of Freelance Writer Shielding Guy back then!
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ichabod+author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=4&selm=3394a74a.11017680%40news.pacbell.net&filter=0

Another bit between Tom and I, only to demonstrate that there are people who would kill droids for the hell of it:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ichabod+author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=3&selm=3437a5a1.5236669%40news.mindspring.com&filter=0

An ex-PC Gamer editor took that post as a diss and privately emailed a CGW diss to me. I still think the whole situation was goofy:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:ThierryX%40pacbell.net&start=60&hl=en&rnum=65&selm=32c07ddd.758062%40news.pacbell.net

First post in which I mention OldManMurray:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=seanbaby+author:Thierry+author:Nguyen&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=9&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=12&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=2001&rnum=1&selm=36c3f952.929026%40news.mindspring.com

Enuff with the stupid Scooty posts for the evening.

-Thierry

I know my first post was in Feburary 1989 but the oldest in google's archive is december 1992. I'm not embarassed by my early posting. Actually I think I was more witty and a better writer back then. Mostly because I was fresh out of college so my grammar was a lot better and since the usenet was the center of my life it seems I cared more and put more effort into each post. One thing I forgot was how much I was into os/2 those days. I did and said the same things then that annoy me about linux users now. Seems like a life time ago.
1996 I noticed a big change in myself. First off it was the year that really burned me out on usenet. I went from 3000-5000 post a year to a few hundred. (to about 50 all of 2001). The flame wars over BC3KAD (WHICH STILL AREN'T OVER), the critical bill saga, and a dozens of other similar things drove me away. I also closed up my BBS, gave up os/2 and became a pure microsoft cronie. I also pretty much gave up consoles that year.
One thing that freaked me out were reviews of the colecovision...when it was new. Also as far as I can tell, the great video game crash of 1984 wasn't mentioned at the time it happen. Around 86, it was touched on but any message I found felt that computers were just a natural evolution and that there wasn't a need for consoles anymore. There were ofcourse lots of info and rumors about Atari but no mention of a general crash.

All my early posts are in the whitewolf roleplaying newsgroup where I show the same irritating earnestness I still haven't managed to shake. Tsk. And to think I was such a promising child. Something went horribly wrong.

A couple highlights of my embarrasing pc gaming posts include me praising Derek Smart for his brilliant ideas (before actually trying to play Battlecruiser) and telling Tom Chick off about why publishers are evil after the litgation started between Holistic Design and Ripcord over Noble Armada. I was in rant mode and as I recall he was all too reasonable.

What I'm finding most interesting is how many of the big name posters like Krud just disappeared, never to be seen again. However, I'm guessing old gamers never die, they just move on to a different message board. :)

--Dave

Krud actually showed up at rivalworks, we wrote there a little and so did asher. They went under pretty quick. The woman who asked us to contribute something kept bringing up some argument we had on Usenet and mentioned Krud was on the team.

I had no idea who she was, did she have any idea the number of arguments I had on Usenet?

Chet

That Rivalworks woman was Meghan Rodberg, wife of Alex Rodberg, the Tribes 2 marketing guy. Meghan used to work at Interplay and was an online rep.

Mark and I had an online spat once about previews. I think I even made a crack about him writing tepid prose. After it was all over, we walked off the tarmac into the fog and I said something like 'this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship'.

-Tom

Mark - I just knew her as the woman who promised money, but never paid. I think our only rivalworks compensation was some free rivalworks T-shirts.

That whole company/site was so poorly run it was terrifying. Oddly enough they just paid to renew their domain name.

Chet

Meghan didn't cut checks, so don't blame her. Didn't they stiff you on some advertising you ran for them as well?

The whole goldrush mentality was really weird. I had a guy I'd never met or talk to call me and offer me a job helping to run the editorial content of a portal site devoted to military families. I've never been in the armed forces either! I didn't want it because I would have had to relocate to Jacksonville.

Anyway, the guy told me that the VC people funding it would get angry if he didn't spend their money fast enough! That's why he was so frantic to staff up. Crazy stuff.

Then there was Indieplanet. They basically paid me what became a monthly retainer fee because they were so disorganized they hardly ever asked me for content.

I was on their internal email list so I'd get all kinds of wacky mass emails. "Who took my lunch from the fridge! Whom ever you are, I hope you enjoyed you son of a bitch!" "Someone took my chair while I was out sick. Please return it." "Who wants to go to the lesbian poetry slam reading tonight?"

I miss those days.

OK I gotta find a way to erase some of those old posts...

Good lord was I ever that moronic? Am I still that moronic? I need a drink.

I say, why stop being moronic? It's a lifestyle. Works for me, anyway.

Too bad USENET is pretty much dead at this point, and it's being abused heavily for warez and porn. AFAIK it is the only reliable source left for warez for the average internet user.

X-No-Archive, baby.

There's a smattering of posts from recent years from me, but I turned on X-No-Archive after a fellow simulation columnist for another magazine took a general comment I made about a Novalogic dog-n-pony show trip personally and started an anti-Denny Usenet jihad, dragging up old posts and trying to use them against me.

Didn't want to have to edit every damn thing I posted so it couldn't be taken out of context three years later...

The irony was that I wasn't accusing this guy of anything, but he certainly took it personally...

Oldest post I found on google was a 12/92 tech support posting about the Amiga 4000, but I know I'd posted on Usenet long before that. I just can't remember what email address I was using. :)

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=dennya%40cup.portal.com&hl=en&scoring=d&rnum=10&selm=71463%40cup.portal.com

Before 1995 I was a big time Compuserve user. Best place to go were the Compuserve Forums where you could actually talk to the game developers directly. This was before the marketing pukes put up bulletproof screens between the gamer and developer.

I wonder if Compuserve still keeps records of their old forum archives ?

The real glory years were during 1996-1998. I was also a huge fan of Gamepen's original Therapy columns. I even contributed a guest column piece for Gordon Berg in Flight Sim Therapy.

After 1998 everything - including the computer game business - became serious. You couldn't even have a decent flame war on usenet anymore because some soft bellied puke would threaten litigation and defamation.

During 1999 I basically abandoned usenet for more focused web forums. I remember criticising the unwieldy nature of web-based forums compared to usenet - now I use nothing but web-based forums.

Amazing how times change. What it also shows me is that I have been following the game business for a heck of a long time. Far out man. J

Here's a piece I did on the famous Rod White for Flight Sim Therapy :

---

Quote:

And in the beginning ... there was PCME ...

What would the Flight Sim newsgroup be without Rod White ? A very boring place indeed. I present to you the latest exciting episode in "Days Of Our PCME" <queue appropriate music> :

"I'm not gonna flame you. You have a VERY valid gripe dude. It just so happens my partner is VERY lazy, that's all. It took him two weeks to update the mainpage and he still didn't do a very good job of cleaning it up as he should have on Saturday. You're 100% right, it shouldn't take that long. The problem is, I'm the main person who's doing all of the work, with some help here and there from the other guys who write for us. My partner is truly not a partner any longer." -Rod White

What's this you say ? Trouble in Camelot ? And where is Michael Bendner ?

"By the way, he's off at CGDC goofing off, so he won't answer until this weekend when he gets back. I do everything I can for our readers, but it's been really hard lately, because I'm the one doing just about everything these days. Getting rid of a partner is not an easy task as well, but I've been trying." -Rod White

To the screams of "Et tu Brute !" a collective holding of breath was evident in the newsgroup. One regular summed it up nicely :

"Yeah, I for one cannot *wait* till he gets back and reads this post. You guys should have saved it for the 4th of July, because I predict we're gonna get a nice fireworks show." -Patrick

Caesar ... err ... Michael did post a comeback. One has to give him credit for this very measured response :

"Heard it. Stay tuned for the first (and probably last) exciting chapter of
"PCM&E Wars: Mike Strikes Back" early next week. :-)" -Michael Bendner Editor, PCM&E Magazine

One can never fault Rod for publishing a timely and frequently updated website. But what will happen with PCME ? Split in two ? A name change ? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode coming to a theatre near you.

---

---

Quote:

Australia - Land Of The ... Brave ?

And you would have to be brave to post an anti-US comment in the Flight Sim newsgroup. In response to a thread about why games companies in the US focus on US-built aircraft one Aussie posted :

"Bob, you are a true dickhead and a bloody good example of why God created America (it was somewhere to put the Americans). Within your 60 year timeframe there was rather a significant air battle called the Battle of Britain, and it was won by British aeroplanes using British engines. I usually like yanks and the USA, but every now and then some twerp like you will pull my chain and I'll go right off." -Kim, Australia

Who prompted all of this resentment ?

"Every great AIR WAR in the past sixty years has been won with US A/C and US or US trained pilots. The French haven't won a war since the middle ages, the Soviets got ran out of Afganistan by a bunch of natives living in the stone age, the British are too busy drueling over the latest royal family sex scandal, and the only reason why the Chinese military is a threat is because of technology Clinton gives them in exchange for campaign donations. American air superiority is superior." -Bob Andrepont

Bob has obviously gone to the Cleve Blakemore School Of Humility.

In the grand tradition of the newsgroup this generated a whole slew of off-topic posts. Being a fellow Aussie myself (no I am NOT a New Zealand import Gordon!) my immediate thought was to dig a hole and prepare for the incoming artillery. I was not disappointed :

"Well, then, you are a bloomin tosser and a right sod....a bloody good example of why God created Australia...a place to toss another Aussie on the barby..... No, wait a second, if Kangarooville was the world's biggest Penal Colony, you must be a genuine Penile Implant!" -ARHarris

"Well way to go! You've successfully ignited a heated flame war over America vs. NameYourCountry! It sure did sound like an indictment of ALL Americans to me ("why God created America (some place to put the Americans), etc.)." -Kevin "FNViper" Buchanan

You tell him Kevin ! Kim did gain some support from the US "side" :

"Nor MOST "merikins" I would hope. But we have some perfect specimens of the
"ugly american" syndrome." -Robey

Everyone knows that Australia was created by God to put Cleveland Blakemore somewhere other than the United States. For anyone unfamiliar with Australia it is a rather large landmass situated somewhere in a big ocean. Its previous occupants were taken over some 200 odd years ago by a bunch of British criminals who got tired of stealing bread and pickpocketing and decided to cause trouble over here instead. A bunch of Dutch seamen did come and have a peek-a-boo but decided it just wasn't worth the effort and left Australia for the Brits.

During these 200 years the population has expanded to 18 million people and most Aussie's live on the east and west coast of Australia. The centre of Australia is one huge desert inhabited by Cleve Blakemore who is busily writing that epic RPG "Grimoire". Mind you it may take another 200 years or so before we see any results.

One question I have always asked myself is just what the hell have we been doing for 200 years when in that time the US has expanded to some 220 million plus people and become the premier superpower of the world in a landmass roughly equivalent to the size of Australia ?!

In the worst case of thread drift I have seen in a while one Brit posted the following "secret" information about US servicemen serving in the UK :

"Americans were actively used in the second WW and if they hadn't been with us, we would definitely have lost. You see, we couldn't afford to put engines into half of our Spitfires, so what we did was to kindly ask some Americans to sit in the engine housing and pedal as fast as they could. To get more power, the British pilots just pulled on their throttles, which were attached to these unfortunate Americans's private parts." -James Hallows

I don't know about you but the thought of a bunch of Americans doing their best "Fred Flinstone" impersonation is somewhat amusing.

After this the thread degenerated into posts insulting Aborigines, mass killings, and other meanderings. What's my take on all of this ? Kangaroos are pests, Koala Bears have a bladder problem, 80% of combat flight simulations originate from the US, and some Americans are my best friends. How's that for fence sitting !

---

Ah, found the bloody "search by date," which was awfully useful since, x-no-archive be damned, my name seems to be mentioned in about 4,780 posts. Good lord.

And I actually located my very first Usenet post! I'd been reading it for a couple of years before this, but first posted in 2/89, two months out of college.

It's amusing how much effort I make to be polite and follow netiquette, even offering to post a summary of the responses I get. This was the pre-Cletus-the-Slack-Jawed-Yokel Usenet, after all...

Most of my early posts are actually for-sales, since I did most of my yammering on GEnie, BIX, and CI$ in those days.

'A couple highlights of my embarrasing pc gaming posts include me praising Derek Smart for his brilliant ideas (before actually trying to play Battlecruiser)'

Aaaaahhahah.

'One question I have always asked myself is just what the hell have we been doing for 200 years when in that time the US has expanded to some 220 million plus people and become the premier superpower of the world in a landmass roughly equivalent to the size of Australia ?!'

Isn't the interior of the country practically uninhabitable?

---

Quote:

It's amusing how much effort I make to be polite and follow netiquette, even offering to post a summary of the responses I get. This was the pre-Cletus-the-Slack-Jawed-Yokel Usenet, after all...

---

---

Quote:

Isn't the interior of the country practically uninhabitable?

---

That above post was from me by the way. Dunno why it didn't take my password that time.

Any comments on the whole "USENET is dead" situation? At this point USENET is *only* useful as a historical archive. Sad.

In the old days, USENET was pretty self-selecting; any given newsgroup was the "elite" of people interested in that topic.

Now any given messageboard is far superior to usenet is archiving, searching, linking, and content, mostly because of superior technology. You can't run a mod archive side-by-side for Civ 3 on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic, and thread lookups are annoying.

Maybe google will change all this; who knows?

"In the old days, USENET was pretty self-selecting; any given newsgroup was the "elite" of people interested in that topic."

I don't think the technical reasons are valid. That's a small part of it (mostly in terms of ease of use, and accessibility), but USENET with a good newsreader program is FAR superior to this crappy Discus board, for example.

I think it's the influx of massive numbers of average people. In the past, all USENET had was the technological elite who were somewhat self selecting and made meaningful contributions to the group by and large. In other words, the signal to noise ratio is WAY too low now.

IMO it was a lost cause by mid-1999.

---

Quote:

IMO it was a lost cause by mid-1999.

---

To dredge up Geryk's old article, almost all the postings in the old days were "how do I do this" type things for games; web discussions for specific games are much better at this than USENET's general groups.

The speciality groups are pretty good (AOE-specific and the like), but not everyone carries them. Additionally, the small amount of rating systems on messageboards actually do tend to weed out inferior content.

Like, for example, my pointless paragraph break above.

Dunno how much of an issue this is with other people, but I now avoid posting on Usenet because if I do, I get swamped with spam.

Well, that, and for work-related reasons, but that's a TOTALLY different story...

I go there when I'm curious about a title I haven't heard much about or for particular newsgroups dealing with particular issues.

Usenet today, and it may have always for all I know, feels like an old boys club full of harpies chattering on about things they've already made up their minds about years ago. Everything they encounter is immediately plugged into the old paradigms and in-jokes and heated flame wars. And those are the people who know what they're talking about...

I dunno, sometimes it's worth it. I've encountered some of the more interesting people and sites because of usenet all in all but the hassle and signal-to-noise ratio of it doesn't encourage me much. Now, if only Scharmers would come here to hang out...

The earliest one of my posts I've been able to find is from October, 1984 [sic]. That's so far back that I had one of those Old Testament email addresses, full of bangs (!) and routing information:

{utzoo,allegra,decvax,ihnp4}!watmath!watrose!vljohnson

I was in fourth year at university then.

Later I would be active on Compuserve. I held an account there for many years, and dumped it the day the AOL buy-out was confirmed. CIS was pretty expensive, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing: I found that the quality of the discussion there dropped significantly with each reduction in the connect time rates. The same thing has basically happened on Usenet. :-/

Yeah, I had C$S back in 87 I believe; 1200 baud rates were $12.50 an hour, double for I think for 2400 baud. Damn expensive, but typically the discussions were good, and IOK was fun :)

After a year of that went off to GEnie, BIX.. BIX probably had the most "serious" discussions I think, because of its nature (being associated with Byte) and the people that frequented it.

--- Alan