From Newsgroup: news.groups

"There was a time when I would read the whole internet, every day.

Oh, not all of it. But when Usenet - the internet's first widescale
social media - was bridged into Fidonet (a network of dial-up BBSes), my
local free bulletin board system began to import several hundred Usenet newsgroups, updating several times per day. I would dial up to this BBS
and read my way through all of the new posts on these groups.

Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more
newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible."

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

--
Paul W. Schleck
pschleck@panix.com

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) wrote or quoted:

Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more
newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible."

. . . and then, it got possible again . . .

Honestly, there are so few new posts popping up on de.-Usenet
these days that I have a reading mode where I just check out
all the latest messages from /every/ de.-newsgroup, all mixed
together and then sorted by time.

Twenty years back, I'd knock out some stuff around the house,
hop online to answer a few questions in the programming groups,
then circle back to my chores. Now those groups are either
ghost towns or stuck in a rut with the same handful of folks
rehashing the same old lines.

So, what am I supposed to do with my chores now? It's gotten tough!


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Verily, in article <103p0mu$lc1$1@reader2.panix.com>, did
pschleck@panix.com deliver unto us this message:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

From the article:

# Blogging formalized this process: the blogroll, the reblog, and the
# ?via? link at the bottom of the post were tailored for probabilistic
# reading ? add an RSS reader to follow the sites you discovered because
# you noticed that they were your favorite bloggers? favorite bloggers
# and you were in business.

That seemed handy at the time for forming communities, but now that I've
seen the resulting echo chambers and their effects on us, I'm not so
sure. Things may have been better when it was harder to surround
ourselves by people who agree with us.
--
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always
depend on the support of Paul.
--George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Verily, in article <chores-20250628161801@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>, did ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de deliver unto us this message:

pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) wrote or quoted:

Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more
newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible."

. . . and then, it got possible again . . .

Even today, it would be hard to keep up with alt.politics.trump. Perhaps
you should participate in more flamewars. :-)
--
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always
depend on the support of Paul.
--George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote at 15:21 this Saturday (GMT):

pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) wrote or quoted:

Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more
newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible."

. . . and then, it got possible again . . .

Honestly, there are so few new posts popping up on de.-Usenet
these days that I have a reading mode where I just check out
all the latest messages from /every/ de.-newsgroup, all mixed
together and then sorted by time.

Twenty years back, I'd knock out some stuff around the house,
hop online to answer a few questions in the programming groups,
then circle back to my chores. Now those groups are either
ghost towns or stuck in a rut with the same handful of folks
rehashing the same old lines.

So, what am I supposed to do with my chores now? It's gotten tough!

Even with the low turnout, I still manage to let messages pile up and it
took a few hours to read all of them. It got to the point I had to set
up slrnpull to only save 15 messages per newsgroup a day, so it didn't
get out of control as fast.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Melissa Hollingsworth <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> writes:

Verily, in article <103p0mu$lc1$1@reader2.panix.com>, did
pschleck@panix.com deliver unto us this message:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

From the article:

# Blogging formalized this process: the blogroll, the reblog, and the
# ?via? link at the bottom of the post were tailored for probabilistic
# reading ? add an RSS reader to follow the sites you discovered because
# you noticed that they were your favorite bloggers? favorite bloggers
# and you were in business.

That seemed handy at the time for forming communities, but now that I've seen the resulting echo chambers and their effects on us, I'm not so
sure. Things may have been better when it was harder to surround
ourselves by people who agree with us.

Well said. It was great when the technical level was so high that one
would be really careful about saying anything not strictly true.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2