I have had an amateur radio license for 57 years, and have operated
virtually all modes over this time including sideband, CW, fast and slow
scan television, radio teletype, and some other digital modes, on both HF
and VHF / UHF frequencies.

Not until my recent arrival on Usenet newsgroups did I discover this
additional source of timely amateur information.

I am disgusted and utterly appalled at the total lack of good judgment and
appropriate behavior, to say nothing of common courtesy and ham radio
civility which shows up here on occasion.

In particular, the thread in this newsgroup dealing with a most unfortunate
spat between individuals who happened to have ham radio licenses is
inexcusably inappropriate.

I feel embarrassed to be a member of a group who allow this type of
behavior to go unchecked. I sincerely request that those responsible for
posting such material, entirely and utterly unrelated to amateur radio,
take their childish battle off of this news group and any other amateur
radio news group. It is hardly worthy of a children's playground behavior,
let alone a meeting place for technically educated adults.

Smarty

Smarty wrote:
I have had an amateur radio license for 57 years, and have operated
virtually all modes over this time including sideband, CW, fast and slow
scan television, radio teletype, and some other digital modes, on both HF
and VHF / UHF frequencies.

Not until my recent arrival on Usenet newsgroups did I discover this
additional source of timely amateur information.

I am disgusted and utterly appalled at the total lack of good judgment and
appropriate behavior, to say nothing of common courtesy and ham radio
civility which shows up here on occasion.

In particular, the thread in this newsgroup dealing with a most unfortunate
spat between individuals who happened to have ham radio licenses is
inexcusably inappropriate.

I feel embarrassed to be a member of a group who allow this type of
behavior to go unchecked. I sincerely request that those responsible for
posting such material, entirely and utterly unrelated to amateur radio,
take their childish battle off of this news group and any other amateur
radio news group. It is hardly worthy of a children's playground behavior,
let alone a meeting place for technically educated adults.

Smarty

You arrived on usenet too late. It was a good discussion platform
when many experts exchanged valuable ideas, but it fell victim of
the new developments in IT and internet, and general unwillingness
to adapt. Most users who wanted a modern system left for the forums
and later the social media, and what was left was a group of unmannered
and often autistic folks who are not a good representation of the
community, no matter if it is amateur radio or another topic that is
being discussed.

Usenet as a discussion platform as it is now should not be taken
seriously. It is in its late stages of dying. What is left of usenet
is now mainly used for binary file transfer.
The discussions that once took place on usenet are now on forums,
blogs, twitter and facebook. It can be seen as a pity, but the blame
mostly falls on the usenet maintainers.

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

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.



--
Jim Pennino

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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


--
Jim Pennino

On 2/14/2015 7:57 PM, 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.


Like you...

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.


Not entirely. There was also the fact that many people were using slow
modem connections and were being charged by the byte (which is still
true in some parts of the world today). HTML unnecessarily increased
download time and bytes transferred.

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


Not necessarily. Some news servers don't accept any attachments; others
don't accept binary attachments.

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



And many news servers don't cary many of the alt.* groups. They're not
as well supported as the big eight.


--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle

==================

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".

On Tue, 30 Jun 2015 16:29:04 -0500, Joe wrote:

I'm getting tired of registering on some new forum EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND.
Some are pretty good, others are terrible. And the Yahoo! Groups - what a
confusing mess to navigate. Really good information out there on some of the
groups/forums, but register, register, register - login, login, login.

I guess I'm just getting old and paranoid. I don't do "social media", especially
Facebook and Twitter. I prefer not to give my life details away just to be sold
for data fusion for user tracking.

+1! +1! +1! +1! +1! +1!

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | W3DHJ | W3DHJ | http://W3DHJ.net/
Pueblo, Colorado | @ | Jonesy | __
38.238N 104.547W | jonz.net | DM78rf | 73 SK

Joe Joe wrote:
I'm getting tired of registering on some new forum EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND.
Some are pretty good, others are terrible. And the Yahoo! Groups - what a
confusing mess to navigate. Really good information out there on some of the
groups/forums, but register, register, register - login, login, login.

I guess I'm just getting old and paranoid. I don't do "social media", especially
Facebook and Twitter. I prefer not to give my life details away just to be sold
for data fusion for user tracking.

I completely agree with that, and that is why I am still on usenet.
However, it is just a clear fact that what is left of it is not comparable
to what it was before. You may trigger the occasional good discussion,
but usually it is just the dickheads that come in to ruin it.

"Rob" wrote in message ...

Joe Joe wrote:
I'm getting tired of registering on some new forum EVERY TIME I TURN
AROUND.
Some are pretty good, others are terrible. And the Yahoo! Groups - what a
confusing mess to navigate. Really good information out there on some of
the
groups/forums, but register, register, register - login, login, login.

I guess I'm just getting old and paranoid. I don't do "social media",
especially
Facebook and Twitter. I prefer not to give my life details away just to be
sold
for data fusion for user tracking.

# I completely agree with that, and that is why I am still on usenet.
# However, it is just a clear fact that what is left of it is not comparable
# to what it was before. You may trigger the occasional good discussion,
# but usually it is just the dickheads that come in to ruin it.

Indeed. Remember the GFWs (Great Fractal Wars (tm)) a few years ago.
Lots of discussion and some nasty comments, but usually not as bad as
today's standards.