GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

27-03-2006, 06:25 PM posted to triangle.gardens

wrote:

Anne, If I offended you, I am soooo very sorry. I have been a member
of this newsgroup for over a year and just thought it would be neat to
have one for those who just want to trade, rather than looking through
all the other gardening related topics. If you are not interested in

Hi JM,

Not speaking for Anne, but I can explain a bit of my own frustration with the newer Usenet community in the context of your new swapping group. The problem I see is that so many people have never experienced newsgroups (not "bulletin boards" or "groups" or "mailing lists" but rather true newsgroups) as they were originally meant to be: text messages read in a threaded client. What I see happening over and over is that new folks find a newsgroup, watch it for a while and say "hey, this could be so much better if it only had posts about such-and-so." So they then create a new place (a google group, a PHP forum, a yahoo group, etc - so many possibilities exist now) to hang out and discuss their smaller interest. These new systems don't interact or even interoperate with the older methods, and it gets frustrating to try to keep up with them all.

For example, in one of my hobbies (hang gliding) I have to monitor 5 different e-mail lists for different sites within the state, 1 online magazine which hosts PHP forums, 1 real newsgroup (totally dead now), 2 (out of MANY) bloggers which I can get via an RSS feed, and at least 3 national/international Yahoo Groups. The sense of community that used to be fostered by a common "place" is gone for people interested in hang gliding, and as I read postings from people on all these different mediums, I can see the thread of one interesting article or concept make its way around the different forums - and therefore have to scan/read it many times.

Anyway, there are so very few postings here on triangle.gardens that I think it would be the *perfect* place for plant swapping to take place. Usually the subject lines make it easy to separate out wheat from chaff. Gardening is not my primary interest, but I do like to quickly scan through and see what troubles people have, and if someone had plants to give away or trade I might partake and make my yard a bit better. But I'm not likely to go sign up and monitor yet another media type just to have access to that. So speaking selfishly, I'd love to see this kept at home, here in the newsgroup. Of course it's a free country, but as more and more people exercise their freedom by pulling away into little cliques, that reduces the power of the whole.

My opinions only, and a favorite rant...

my idea, that is fine and you do not have to participate. However, I
find it very rude of you to be so bold as to encourage an avid SOUTHERN
gardener to be gone just because I came up with the idea. Last time I
checked this is a free country. Hope you have a great year gardening
and God Bless you.

--
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