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Rob[_8_] · February 15th 15, 09:31 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

wrote:
Rob wrote:
wrote:
Rob wrote:

snip

(who prohibited HTML, attachments, etc and delayed the creation of
newsgroups by prohibitive bureaucratic mechanisms)

If you actually knew anything about USENET and it's history, you wouldn't
be asking such questions.

I am on usenet since about 1994 and I have seen the "all postings should
be plaintext 80-column format" debates more than often enough.

Only since 1994; a newbee then.

Do you really think you should start a ****ing contest to win an argument?
Lame...

When HTML was suggested to allow markup and MIME was invented to allow
attachements, it was forbidden by the usenet people. This made those
that did not grow up with 80-character ASCII terminals leave the scene
in disgust. Pity.

The idea that USENET should be ASCII comes from the desire that it be
usable with ANY terminal out there. There are STILL lots of ASCII
only newreaders out there. A lot of people do not use web browsers
to interact with USENET.

I already told you that I have seen the debate more than often enough.
It is like the hams who think that only CW should be used because it
is the best mode for weak signal work and they have all the equipment.
They have focussed so strongly on that, that they did not see the world
around them has changed. They keep hammering out the same thing even
when it is no longer true.

Attachments have ALWAYS been allowed if uuencoded; all real newsreaders
support uuencode/uudecode.

What I mean is that charters and server policies explicitly disallow
them, and that there are active "guardians" on groups, and even robots,
that go after those that post them.

This meant that a discussion that requires a simple drawing or schematic
for clarification could not be held on usenet, and people went to places
where it was no problem. In the first stage, those were the webforums.

This was very unfortunate because it fragmented the community, now you
had to look on a specific forum instead of "on usenet" which was more
like a network of forums. The usenet people failed to see that and
stubbornly held to their sacred 80-character fixed font paradigm, while
the rest of the world moved on to flowed paragraphs, inline illustrations,
simple markup, etc. But they lost the common communication platform
in that process.
(had the usenet guardians not be so stubborn, the web forums could have
used usenet as their underlying message store and forward layer)

There are NO "prohibitive bureaucratic mechanisms" for the alt. groups
and it is blazingly obvious to the most casual observer what that
leads too.

There are always pros and cons to "there should be law and order".