This is about GardenBanter! :~)

Whilst multi-tasking at the old computer this afternoon (running all
the end of year financial stuff that I should have done in April) I've
been doing a bit of URG archiving.

Relevant that I'm using News.Individual.Net as my news provider.

I've noticed that Kay's posts to the group can occasionally freeze for
a while (and Kay's acknowledged this); sometimes they appear like
buses and other times they don't get as far as my newsreader.

But whilst archiving, I've noticed:

1) a high proportion of GardenBanter questions to which one or more of
us responds with a "more information" request which is never answered
so the question just dries up;
2) that GardenBanter, far from being a "community", seems to be a say
hello, ask a question, disappear place. With the exception of Kay,
there appear to be no "regulars" which seems a little odd, given the
"viewed" counts on some of its posts.

I know there are those among us who regard GB as a pain. TBH, I think
GB itself is a pain but its users are not, if you get my drift.

But I'm beginning to wonder whether a lot of budding gardeners are
being put off. Are people responding to our requests for more info but
that response doesn't get out of the GB system? Is there a "community"
at GB which we're not seeing?

(Incidentally we often tell people to look at the "sticky" at the top
of the relevant bit of GB. That's a very old sticky. The more recent
version which the group spent time devising is somewhere down a page
somewhere.)

I suppose, at the end of the day, we embrace, tolerate or ignore GB
users. But if we want to do anything other than ignore then it's worth
checking out what seems to be going wrong. If, as I suspect, URGlers
provide the majority of the answers that draw GB users to it and,
without which, GB would not cover its costs by advertising income, we
have some clout and could perhaps persuade the owner(s) to do
something about their problems.

What do you think, Kay (in particular)?

(Forget communicating with the unmonitored GB admin system; I have
actual contact details of the owner.)

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from Swansea Bay. Dave's at that end; I'm at this end.
Bill G's in the middle. Come to think of it, where is Bill G these days?

"Jake" wrote ((Huge Snip))

This is about GardenBanter! :~)


Whilst showing a young couple an allotment that is vacant on our site I
mentioned urg and Newsgroups to them and they looked blank, when I mentioned
that Newsgroups predated the www I think they thought I was mad. A lot of
people out there have never heard of Newsgroups, certainly not Usenet, and
do everything, including e-mails, on the web, they don't use a mail program
so never see the little word "newsgroups" which might make them curious
which is what happened to me a lifetime ago. All those people will only ever
come to urg via a web based portal like Gardenbanter.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

On 10/06/2012 23:37, Bob Hobden wrote:
A lot of people out there have never heard of Newsgroups, certainly
not Usenet, and do everything, including e-mails, on the web

I've come across a number of people who are oblivious to the fact they
can have an email client on their computer and instead they exclusively
use the webmail of their internet service provider. While it may suit
some folks, personally I prefer to take charge of my own emails and
archive them as relevant to CD etc. Don't like to be dependent on any
internet service provider storing my stuff. It also gives me much more
freedom to change service provider when necessary.

In article ,
lid says...


But whilst archiving, I've noticed:

1) a high proportion of GardenBanter questions to which one or more of
us responds with a "more information" request which is never answered
so the question just dries up;

Probably because a high proportion of its users are beginners unable to
remember or retrieve the original thread on GB. They may not even remember
which of the GB gardening portals they posted their message in. (urg is
only one of them)

2) that GardenBanter, far from being a "community", seems to be a say
hello, ask a question, disappear place.

There are many far better forums and discussion groups; so banter
members tend to be either inexperienced hobbyists or inexperienced
surfers.. many of their posts suggest both. If their interest in either
the new hobby or surfing lasts or deepens they no doubt move on from
banter.

I suppose, at the end of the day, we embrace, tolerate or ignore GB
users. But if we want to do anything other than ignore then it's worth
checking out what seems to be going wrong. If, as I suspect, URGlers
provide the majority of the answers that draw GB users to it

and,
without which, GB would not cover its costs by advertising income, we
have some clout and could perhaps persuade the owner(s) to do
something about their problems.

are you aware he runs many banter groups

http://website.informer.com/Kevin+Mi...rnet+Ltd..html


producing a nice banterincome

(scroll down for annual figures and trends; and check the director)

http://bizzy.co.uk/uk/06271012/one-search-banter

Janet

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 22:37:00 +0100, Bob Hobden wrote:

... when I mentioned that Newsgroups predated the www I think they
thought I was mad.

To most people the WWW *is* "the internet" and is a 21st Centaury
invention not a product of the cold war dating from the early 1980's
(or before depending...). Me, I've been on the internet since 1992,
about the same time that first few hundred pages of the WWW were
being put online. Searching for stuff was fun back then with Gopher
or WAIS, not that there was much to find!

--
Cheers
Dave.

If that was just gb, then I would expect to see "further information" but find that I'm the only person answering, because those on the urg side of the fence don't see the further information. I can't say I've noticed, but haven't really been looking.
Even before gb urg was going that way a bit. In the early days there really was a community, which was why we set up the urgring to see each other's gardens, and had urgmeets in various parts of the country. But that was in the early days when you had to have a certain level of geekiness to be on the internet, and you would meet the same people in all sorts of different groups (we used to joke that all the newgroups were populated by the same 100 posters). As the internet got more popular, there was a steady rise in the people treating it as a gardening CAB.
No.
The only community is on urg, basically you lot in Wales, and the Devon/Cornwall lot. Largely people who also know each other in real life. There are other regular posters from gb - I can think of at least one.

Dunno.

I note they have strict rules about gb users using it for their own advertising, but they make no effort to monitor this and remove ads. So it would look as if they have taken a pragmatic decision that it's bringing in the money OK as it is.

Please let me know if you see my answer!

I pop in to GB most days, On the odd occasion that I've asked a question only once did I not receive any replies, most of the time I've had quite a few replies.

I do use news groups but I find them a PITA as you get every thing downloaded whether you want to read it or not, and the download speed is throttled to 116Kbs. With GB I just open the threads that interest me and they come down at 7.5Mbs

Forums do have some very real advantages over groups, you don't need to quote anything unless you want to reply to a specific pert of someone's text, you can use emoticons if you want, you can embed pictures into your posts but above all you can moderate and ban people if they seriously misbehave, you can set the rules in a 'stickey'
There are companies such as Free Forum Hosting - InvisionFree that allow you to set up forums for free.

It does get taken down if you click on the 'report as inappropriate button' but I think it is only if it originates from a GB subscriber, not an URG one.

On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:48:38 +0000, Granity
wrote:


kay;961280 Wrote:

Everything snipped.

FWIW, I didn't see Kay's post before Granity quoted it.

And, also FWIW, I have never met any other URGler in the flesh, not
even the other Taffies.

Personally I'm not bothered that the Middleton family is making a mint
out of its web forum activities. What I AM bothered about is that any
number of budding gardeners may be put off by the fact that Mr
Middleton's "system" is unreliable and that people on GB may get the
impression that we're a cliquey, unhelpful lot which we are not!

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from Swansea Bay. Dave's at that end; I'm at this end.
Bill G's in the middle. Come to think of it, where is Bill G these days?

In article , Granity.a4bb8b6
@gardenbanter.co.uk says...

kay;961280 Wrote:
If that was just gb, then I would expect to see "further information"
but find that I'm the only person answering, because those on the urg
side of the fence don't see the further information. I can't say I've
noticed, but haven't really been looking.
Even before gb urg was going that way a bit. In the early days there
really was a community, which was why we set up the urgring to see each
other's gardens, and had urgmeets in various parts of the country. But
that was in the early days when you had to have a certain level of
geekiness to be on the internet, and you would meet the same people in
all sorts of different groups (we used to joke that all the newgroups
were populated by the same 100 posters). As the internet got more
popular, there was a steady rise in the people treating it as a
gardening CAB.
No.
The only community is on urg, basically you lot in Wales, and the
Devon/Cornwall lot. Largely people who also know each other in real
life. There are other regular posters from gb - I can think of at least
one.
Dunno.

I note they have strict rules about gb users using it for their own
advertising, but they make no effort to monitor this and remove ads. So
it would look as if they have taken a pragmatic decision that it's
bringing in the money OK as it is.

Please let me know if you see my answer!

I pop in to GB most days, On the odd occasion that I've asked a question
only once did I not receive any replies, most of the time I've had quite
a few replies.

I do use news groups but I find them a PITA as you get every thing
downloaded whether you want to read it or not, and the download speed is
throttled to 116Kbs. With GB I just open the threads that interest me
and they come down at 7.5Mbs

Forums do have some very real advantages over groups, you don't need to
quote anything unless you want to reply to a specific pert of someone's
text, you can use emoticons if you want, you can embed pictures into
your posts but above all you can moderate and ban people if they
seriously misbehave, you can set the rules in a 'stickey'
There are companies such as 'Free Forum Hosting - InvisionFree'
(http://www.invisionfree.com/) that allow you to set up forums for
free.


I note they have strict rules about gb users using it for their own
advertising, but they make no effort to monitor this and remove ads. So
it would look as if they have taken a pragmatic decision that it's
bringing in the money OK as it is.

It does get taken down if you click on the 'report as inappropriate
button' but I think it is only if it originates from a GB subscriber,
not an URG one.




--
Granity

Granity's banterpost has appeared, but the original of Kay's did not .

Janet

Not with a decent newsreader - you can download just the headers, then go back and pick the threads you're interested in. But if you're reading every day, then on a moderately used newsgroup like urg, you shouldn't have problems with too large a download. You don't have to read everything, and the newsreader can be set to show you only new posts. And the really great advantage is that they are threaded correctly - something a web forum does not do.
The only problem is if you go on holiday - but that's still a problem with a web forum
that's not a function of newgroups, that's your particular supplier set up. Of course, back when everyone was using dial-up, there was a very real advantage to newsgroups in that you could read and draft replies off-line.

Both of these are true of newsgroups too. Emoticons originated in newsgroups some newsgroups accept pictures. I agree most don't - I think because they originated in dial-up days You can moderate newsgroups and ban users. Moderation depends on a willing and committed moderator, which is why urg has never gone that route.

I've reported blatant spammers/advertisers only to see them pop up again a few days later.

Did my reply to Granity appear?

I wont do a long reply as it really comes down to a matter of personal preferences.

I'm not certain what you mean about incorrect threading, the most recent post comes at the end of the thread and you have a button to click on at the start of each thread heading to take you to the first new post, or you can select the last page of a multi-page thread, essential really as some threads in the main forum I use can reach a thousand pages in length.

I was thinking in terms of animated emoticoms rather than just the basic ones.

Reading and composing off line, well you can compose off line using something like notepad and then cut and paste into the forum, I tend to if it's a long post just in case of a lost connection, a habit carried over from using groups back in the late 80's even though I had an xstream connection from BT (64Kbs or if you won the pools you could have 2 lines and get 128Kbs :-) )

That's exactly what I mean by incorrect threading!

Each topic, if it goes on for more than a few posts, tends to split. So for example A and Z both reply, B replies to A, Y replies to Z, and you in effect have two "threads" both under the same heading. 20 posts on the 'threads' have completely diverged, and there are now 6 of them. A good newsreader reflects this threading so you can read one thread to the end (or not, if you prefer) before going to the next. A web forum presents them in order of posting so you are dodging about all over the place.

Yes, but how tedious is that!!

And I get fed up of having to add in the quote and end-of-quote tags if I want to reply to several points in a post.

ISTR a pic of 3 jogging along the beach which I remembered as you and 2 other urglers. Presumably I got that wrong somewhere?

On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:11:40 +0000, kay
wrote:


Janet;961351 Wrote:


Granity's banterpost has appeared, but the original of Kay's did not
.

Janet

Did my reply to Granity appear?

No. But I can see his post replying to your simple "Did ...?"
question.

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from Swansea Bay. Dave's at that end; I'm at this end.
Bill G's in the middle. Come to think of it, where is Bill G these days?