On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 11:13:31 +0000, Nick Maclaren wrote:

In article ,
David Rance wrote:

I said that it was the first *general* means of electronic
communication. By that I mean available/affordable to all. UUCP may well
have predated it but UUCP was not available to all because of the high
cost of getting connected to the Internet, certainly in the UK, until
1992 when Demon first made it affordable here.

UUCP predated the 'Internet' by some years, and relied on nothing more
than a telephone line and someone who was prepared to talk to you. Cost
was not the issue; the public's perception and lack of nous was. By the
time that Fidonet actually became 'general' (1985),
UUCP was quite widespread among the general public. No, I don't have
figures, but it wouldn't surprise me if UUCP didn't have more members of
the general public using it than Fidonet did until about 1990. There
were versions for MS-DOS by 1985. Of course, their users came from
different communities, so each was and is unaware of the other.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with gardening, so I shall stop here.

[Danger, Will Robinson, long post!]

Just to add a +1 {blush} to the UUCP debate.

UUCP was one standard way of interconnecting Unix computers before we had
ISPs.
[Unix to Unix Copy - does exactly what it says on the tin.]

Slow propagation of data across multiple hops and relying on someone
having a telephone line or two spare (for at least part of the day).

Usenet was suited to this because of the text based postings which could
maintain threading even if they took a while to arrive.

The technology is well out of date.
The structure may not be.

The main strength that I see it that there is a managed hierarchy.

To become part of Usenet you have to make a case for a new group and have
it voted on and approved.

This usually means that for UK based recreational gardeners there is only
one uk.rec.gardening and if someone doesn't like what it is discussing
then they are free to say so, ignore posters, or even leave.

If there is a real problem and enough people vote on it a moderated
version can be set up.

All your News Groups are handled by your News Reader and you can easily
see where there has been new activity, and skip between them at the click
of a button.

Contrast this with web based fora - where there is no regulation (good
thing) but endless fragmentation.

Where do you go for a gardening forum, or a computing forum, or a health
forum?

Google will show you loads of fora with very similar names running very
similar software, a very similar look and feel and if you want to ask a
question and get a considered answer you probably have to join half a
dozen and post the same question to them all.

If you don't like any forum, is costs about £10 a month to rent space on a
server and mount a free discussion forum of your own. There, you can
promote your own views and moderate or bar anyone you don't agree with.
There is a certain natural selection here, as overly moderated fora will
not gain users. However, as I say, it is so easy and cheap to set up a
forum that loads of people do it and it makes life very confusing.

The main downside of Usenet is the lack of graphical content.
This can be viewed as a blessing but the current generation have been
brought up with graphic rich feature rich social media services and
probably want what they are used to.

The main problem with modern social media sites is finding the content
amongst all the background noise.

I find I can't get on with Facebook fora (and I have tried) because the
format seems to be centred on 'look at me now' posts with loads of
pictures instead of a structured set of discussions. Yes, you can comment
but I find it very hard to track up and down over a couple of weeks to try
and find relevant threads. You also have to find the correct Facebook site
as well. Very good for disseminating information but not so good as Usenet
for long discussions. The comment threads seem to be one long stream, not
answer linked to question.

I've tried a bit of Twitter but I struggle to find a structure - which
#taginterestingtopic should I be following and how do I find it? I have a
Twitter account but as nobody I regularly chat with is using it I
generally communicate group information over Facebook with friends, and
specific one-to-one information over the Chat function in Skype.

If I am looking for information and advice I go first to Usenet because it
is structured to make finding resources easy.

Then I use Google and look for a forum, and asses the frequency of posting
and the apparent quality of the answers. If it looks promising I join.
However there are loads of fora where I joined to ask a specific question
then have not visited much afterwards - and I haven't found any
aggregating function to let me watch all these web fora for activity apart
from subscribing to email updates.

I use uk.rec.gardening and uk.d-i-y (amongst others) because they are good
resources and I haven't yet found anything better.

If uk.rec.gardening dries up then I will look for another resource (almost
certainly an online forum) which offers a similar level of knowledge and
helpfulness.

I note that nobody so far has pointed to any site (apart from the much
maligned GardenBanter) which offers a similar discussion forum to here.

If there isn't one, that might be a project for someone?



Finally, accepting that we are mainly old farts who grew up with the
technology and may well have first investigated Usenet because our first
PC came with Outlook Express with a built in news reader and our first ISP
provided a free news server I don't think that this is the only reason
that interest in gardening is dying.



As a home owner for many years I have seen the same size garden morph from
being described as 'small', to 'good size' to 'large' over the years, and
new builds being more and more packed in with smaller and smaller gardens.

I don't think that many people under 30 are really interested in gardening.

I say this from observing my own kids (now over 30), their friends and
neighbours, and our neighbours.

The garden proud generally tend to be of our age group.

There is so much to occupy the younger generations, from eating out to
films, music, gaming, TV that relaxing in the garden or de-stressing
through a bit of gentle weeding is not part of their lifestyle.

A garden is something that must be easily (grudgingly) maintained and is
viewed as somewhere to have friends round for a barbie in the summer or
sit out in occasionally but not as a main focus of pride.

I must also say that it isn't only gardens - this spills over into
cooking, cleaning, house work, all the background 'maintenance' things
which contribute to home life.

People want convenience and their focus is on social activity outside the
home.

I was brought up in suburbia where there was much pride in the gardens,
and gardens were all well maintained because that it what you did.

We live in a different society now, with different priorities.

So in conclusion I thing the declining interest in URG is at least partly
because it reflects the declining interest in gardening as a whole.

Cheers

Dave R