Forum disconnected

Hi people,

The forum and the newsgroup are once more disconnected. So until the
connection is fixed, your posts to the newsgroup reach preciously few
readers. The horrible truth is that forum users (which are about 95%
of this community) would hardly notice.
I've e-mailed Gilby, the forum webmaster, about the situation as I
presume that he has the power to do corrective action. That was
yesterday but nothing seems to have happened since.

Just so you know.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson"

"Klaas Bil" wrote in message
...
Hi people,

The forum and the newsgroup are once more disconnected. So until the
connection is fixed, your posts to the newsgroup reach preciously few
readers. The horrible truth is that forum users (which are about 95%
of this community) would hardly notice.

Some of us would notice.

- john_childs

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 21:57:13 -0800, "Guinness Stout" wrote:

Some of us would notice.

You posted this from the newsgroup, and I can see how newsgroupers
notice it. But you usually post from the forum, so how do YOU notice?
And not a single time, you've done it before.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson"

"Klaas Bil" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 21:57:13 -0800, "Guinness Stout" wrote:

Some of us would notice.

You posted this from the newsgroup, and I can see how newsgroupers
notice it. But you usually post from the forum, so how do YOU notice?
And not a single time, you've done it before.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my
shoes! - Tommy Thompson"

I still remember how to use a newsgroup.

As long as forum continues to have this little disconnect problem we can
hide out here and talk amongst ourselves. It will be like posting in the
"Trash Receptacle" forum, but more secret.

- john_childs

Guinness Mojo wrote:
I still remember how to use a newsgroup.

As long as forum continues to have this little disconnect problem we
can hide out here and talk amongst ourselves. It will be like
posting in the "Trash Receptacle" forum, but more secret.

I have to say I'm rather enjoying the reduced traffic :-)

It's a shame, though, not to have more people here. I *really* dislike
web fora and I much prefer newsgroups to mailing lists, so if the
gateway isn't restored I might just follow Klaas and give up on it
completely.

--
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

Danny Colyer wrote:

I have to say I'm rather enjoying the reduced traffic :-)

It's a shame, though, not to have more people here. I *really* dislike
web fora and I much prefer newsgroups to mailing lists, so if the
gateway isn't restored I might just follow Klaas and give up on it
completely.

It's amazing how few of us usenet users are still out here!

Still, I generally only read 2 or 3 out of the 200-300 posts each
day, so the group has suddenly become a lot more manageable!


- Richard

"Danny Colyer" wrote in message
...

I have to say I'm rather enjoying the reduced traffic :-)

It's a shame, though, not to have more people here. I *really* dislike
web fora and I much prefer newsgroups to mailing lists, so if the
gateway isn't restored I might just follow Klaas and give up on it
completely.

--
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

I also prefer the newsgroup interface over the web forum. But I gave in to
the dark side and switched to the web forum.

The newsgroup has several advantages. It's properly threaded. Your choice
of news reader software. Tracks messages that you have read better. Allows
off-line reading. You can generally read more messages in less time with
good news reader software.

The web forum has several advantages. Easily accessed from most any
internet connected computer. Your preferences will follow you when you
change computers. Message posting is instant to the forum. Since message
posting is instant you can get replies in minutes. It is much more friendly
for the newbies.

The web forum is likely very responsible for getting more people to
participate and the increase in post volume. Most of the new people would
not have discovered this discussion area if not for the web forum.

The web forum does have it's problems. It is not properly threaded. The
messages in each thread are just a flat list. The forum also breaks the
proper therading of messages in the newsgroup. It doesn't keep track of
read and not read posts as well as a good news reader. Since replies can be
instant it causes some chatty style posting. Reading messages is a bit less
efficient than with a good news reader.

What I'd like to see is a dedicated news server at unicyclist.com that hosts
rsu. Having the news server under Gilby's control should improve the forum
to usenet connection. That would give people a choice of using either the
web forum or a news reader.

Second option would be a private news server that is not connected to
usenet. That would still give people a choice of using either the web forum
or the news server for reading and posting. But it wouldn't do anything to
improve the forum to usenet gateway.

I also prefer the newsgroup interface over the web forum. I don't like
being require to register and log onto forums just so that I can post. I
also agree with the list below of newsreader advantages.

I will continue to read rec.sport.unicycling and therefore I will miss some
of the web forum postings.

I don't know why people had to make a "web browser" version of a perfectly
good protocols like nntp. Duplicating services and then trying to cross feed
the different services to keep them synchronized is very inefficient and
prone to problems.

Carl

"Guinness Mojo" wrote in message
...

"Danny Colyer" wrote in message
...

I have to say I'm rather enjoying the reduced traffic :-)

It's a shame, though, not to have more people here. I *really* dislike
web fora and I much prefer newsgroups to mailing lists, so if the
gateway isn't restored I might just follow Klaas and give up on it
completely.

--
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine

I also prefer the newsgroup interface over the web forum. But I gave in
to
the dark side and switched to the web forum.

The newsgroup has several advantages. It's properly threaded. Your
choice
of news reader software. Tracks messages that you have read better.
Allows
off-line reading. You can generally read more messages in less time with
good news reader software.

The web forum has several advantages. Easily accessed from most any
internet connected computer. Your preferences will follow you when you
change computers. Message posting is instant to the forum. Since message
posting is instant you can get replies in minutes. It is much more
friendly
for the newbies.

The web forum is likely very responsible for getting more people to
participate and the increase in post volume. Most of the new people would
not have discovered this discussion area if not for the web forum.

The web forum does have it's problems. It is not properly threaded. The
messages in each thread are just a flat list. The forum also breaks the
proper therading of messages in the newsgroup. It doesn't keep track of
read and not read posts as well as a good news reader. Since replies can
be
instant it causes some chatty style posting. Reading messages is a bit
less
efficient than with a good news reader.

What I'd like to see is a dedicated news server at unicyclist.com that
hosts
rsu. Having the news server under Gilby's control should improve the
forum
to usenet connection. That would give people a choice of using either the
web forum or a news reader.

Second option would be a private news server that is not connected to
usenet. That would still give people a choice of using either the web
forum
or the news server for reading and posting. But it wouldn't do anything
to
improve the forum to usenet gateway.

On Fri, 5 Mar 2004 22:19:04 -0800, "Guinness Mojo" wrote:

As long as forum continues to have this little disconnect problem we can
hide out here and talk amongst ourselves. It will be like posting in the
"Trash Receptacle" forum, but more secret.

I'll check in here from time to time, but more than 95% of the
community is not. It's not a 'little' problem to me.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson"

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 18:43:41 -0800, "Guinness Mojo" wrote:

The newsgroup has several advantages.
Don't forget it can automatically create a local archive if set to do
so, and the archive can be used for statistics purposes (as I have
done a couple of years).

What I'd like to see is a dedicated news server at unicyclist.com that hosts
rsu.
Yes, that would be nice (supposing that 'hosts' should read
'carries'.) Everything ran OK until Gilby was forced to stop using the
university news server, now over a year ago.

This is the nightmare scenario that I've been afraid for for some
time. That the forum would lure all the newsgroup posters away to a
more sexy interface, and then break the connection. When I started
posting over 4 years ago, there was no forum, and the newsgroup was a
flourishing community. Now in itself the newsgroup is almost dead,
except this vibrant complaint thread of course. :-|

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
"Heck, even my toes were aching from trying to grip the soles of my shoes! - Tommy Thompson"