On 2013-11-06 21:21:07 +0000, David in Normandy said:

On 06/11/2013 22:14, Jake wrote:

But after many happy years of Usenet, URG is now the only group I
follow. And I too will ask myself the question "Is it worth it?" when
my annual Usenet provider account is due for renewal. The honest
answer is "Probably not."


You can always use one of the free usenet providers. Nowadays I use
EternalSeptember. I wouldn't dream of paying for a Usenet provider
account due to my extremely low posting on usenet nowadays.

But that isn't the problem, David. Which is that, even while willing to
pay up until now, Jake sees no POINT in continuing to do so. URG no
longer holds the interest or attraction. He mentions the site
www.thinkingardens.co.uk I've also given that link two or three times
on here and I'd be prepared to bet than less than a quarter of urglers
have bothered to look at it. In fact, I wonder if anyone at all has
done so. Again, it's full of opinion and discussion, some of it from
well-known and expert gardeners, writers and designers. But I have yet
to see anyone, other than Jake or me, refer to it or any subject raised
in it. The conclusion one comes to almost inevitably, is that nobody
is interested enough in keeping urg going to look at or discuss other
sources of information or opinion. You say your own posting is low
nowadays but what none of us have done - until now - is as why and what
we can do about it. Of course, the obvious answer is that, if nobody IS
interested enough in keeping urg going, then it will simply fade away
and that is the prerogative of the users.
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk

"Sacha" wrote a message ...

Sacha - just because not many here falls for your "thinking gardens" bait,
then it does not follow that we as urglers are dying !
I am one of those who is quite happy with the status here as it stands.

Pete

In article ,
says...

"Sacha" wrote a message ...

Sacha - just because not many here falls for your "thinking gardens" bait,
then it does not follow that we as urglers are dying !
I am one of those who is quite happy with the status here as it stands.

Quite. I've been posting to urg for 15 years and it is ALWAYS quieter
in winter. Real hands-on gardeners are busy with wintergardening chores,
and interests they don't have time for in the growing season.

Janet

In article ,
Janet wrote:
In article ,
says...
"Sacha" wrote a message ...

Sacha - just because not many here falls for your "thinking gardens" bait,
then it does not follow that we as urglers are dying !
I am one of those who is quite happy with the status here as it stands.

Quite. I've been posting to urg for 15 years and it is ALWAYS quieter
in winter. Real hands-on gardeners are busy with wintergardening chores,
and interests they don't have time for in the growing season.

Nah. We just go dormant :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

"Nick Maclaren" wrote
Janet wrote:
jeanne says...
"Sacha" wrote

Sacha - just because not many here falls for your "thinking gardens"
bait,
then it does not follow that we as urglers are dying !
I am one of those who is quite happy with the status here as it stands.

Quite. I've been posting to urg for 15 years and it is ALWAYS quieter
in winter. Real hands-on gardeners are busy with wintergardening chores,
and interests they don't have time for in the growing season.

Nah. We just go dormant :-)



There is that aspect but from other Ngs it's obvious that Ngs are dying,
here we see few new posters only the old hands.
By coincidence I met a lady who allotment gardens this morning and we got
talking and I mentioned about Newsgroups, she had never heard of them. "How
do I get there" was her comment but she uses Web based mail, she does not
use an email client program. That is the problem, all the new internet folk
use web based mail so never see "Newsgroups" in Tools, and as I did all
those years ago, click it to see what happened.


--
Regards.
Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

On 2013-11-07 09:15:32 +0000, Peter & Jeanne said:

"Sacha" wrote a message ...

Sacha - just because not many here falls for your "thinking gardens"
bait, then it does not follow that we as urglers are dying !
I am one of those who is quite happy with the status here as it stands.

Pete

Calm your conspiracy fears; thinkingardens is nothing to do with me. I
know slightly the person who runs it and that is my sole connection,
along with a few replies I've sent there - perhaps 4 or 5. But if urg
is to rely on your infrequent contributions and help in advising
'drop-in' visitors with problems or who need a plant id, it is indeed
moribund.
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk

I'm not going to quote from anyone's message but to just give a few
thoughts of my own. This will be quite long and if you get bored just
scroll down to the last couple of paragraphs where I have made a
positive suggestion.

URG is a child of its time. It's like the Fidonet which was the first
worldwide general means of electronic communication. The Fidonet died
because a better means of communication grew up, i.e. the Internet. The
Fidonet is still there, and people, mainly Russians, are still writing
software for it, but it is peopled now solely by those who want to keep
a museum piece going.

There were many reasons why people thought the Fidonet was dying, not
least some of the reasons which could be applied to URG.

So how is URG perceived by, say, the newcomer? Some of our biggest
mistakes are, for example, to criticise them for (a) coming to us via
Gardenbanter, or (b) calling URG a forum. Why is it necessary to do
this? By satisfying our own little perception of what URG is, the
newcomer will immediately feel that they are entering a place where they
must mind their P's and Q's. These things may irritate us but is it
necessary to say anything? What good does it do apart from making us
feel that we are "keeping up the standards"? Goodness, how petty!

Why can't we refer to URG as a forum because that's what it is, a place
where discussions can take place. Why shouldn't people use Gardenbanter
to post? Why do we refer to Gardenbanter as "stealing" our messages
where we should be grateful that it is making our messages available to
a wider public. What actual harm is Gardenbanter doing? None! So why
mention it?

Another thing which people say caused the demise of the Fidonet are the
flame wars. There are those who perceive that they are being insulted
and immediately respond, sometimes quite rudely. Most of us haven't a
clue what it was originally about but, by responding publicly, they have
made sure that a lot more people know that there is bad feeling. Here
again, the newcomer will be put off.

I can see why blogs and web sites are becoming more popular. It's
because they are "prettier", with formatting and illustrations. (That's
another reason why the Fidonet died.) In the right hands these can be a
revelation, in the wrong hands they can be even more tedious than a
straight text vehicle. Take the web blog that we had trouble with
recently. I can't help agreeing with a lot of what David Roberts said,
certainly in the context of setting the page out. You'll notice that,
even here, I can try to make my messages more readable by giving some
white space between paragraphs and not making those paragraphs too long.
I'm afraid that Sara simply wrote long blogs with no white space and,
frankly, I lost interest after a time.

But I was a casual reader. An avid reader wouldn't allow such things to
distract them, but how many casual readers have been put off by poor
formatting? It *is* important.

I've been reading URG for around eighteen years, I think. Even when I
started at least one of the stalwarts, Chunky, who helped create URG had
already left - I never saw any messages by him. And Cormaic last only
another five years or so before he found that his business left him too
little time to contribute. But Cormaic was a great encourager. It was he
that persuaded me to post a regular welcome message and he still hosts
the URG web site.

Ok, so we have a URG web site. Why don't we use it? Not much has changed
for years apart from keeping some of the FAQs up-to-date. In fact, it
probably suffers from a lot of the formatting and colour problems that
others have mentioned. It needs a good overhaul. We could keep a blog
going on that. There could be several blogs. Has anyone the vision to
make use of http://www.u-r-g.co.uk ? URG doesn't *have* to stay as a
Usenet group.

As I said, URG is a child of its time. It's twenty years old (that's an
age in Internet terms!) and it's now time to move on. It needs to
metamorphose into something more up-to-date. Well, how about it, folks?

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK

In article ,
David Rance wrote:

URG is a child of its time. It's like the Fidonet which was the first
worldwide general means of electronic communication. ...

Like hell it was! Sorry, but that accolade must go to UUCP; while
it was little used outside of academia, that was simply because few
other people had computers that weren't tightly tied down. Even
Usenet (i.e. newsgroups as we know them) dates from several years
before Fidonet, and I have been using it in its previous form since
1979. By the time Fidonet appeared, UUCP had escaped from academia,
and the 'Internet revolution' had started. Google have stopped
making their history public, but their group archive dates from
1981. Fidonet dates from 1983.

But, yes, URG is a child of its time - I agree with Sacha, except
that I don't agree that the currently favoured alternatives are
a functional replacement or will continue to host reasonable
discussions in the long term. This is a social issue, associated
with the dumbing down of most forms of communication - I have heard
that things are somewhat better outside the USA/UK/etc. grouping,
especially in the Far East.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 Nick Maclaren wrote:

In article ,
David Rance wrote:

URG is a child of its time. It's like the Fidonet which was the first
worldwide general means of electronic communication. ...

Like hell it was! Sorry, but that accolade must go to UUCP; while
it was little used outside of academia, that was simply because few
other people had computers that weren't tightly tied down. Even
Usenet (i.e. newsgroups as we know them) dates from several years
before Fidonet, and I have been using it in its previous form since
1979. By the time Fidonet appeared, UUCP had escaped from academia,
and the 'Internet revolution' had started. Google have stopped
making their history public, but their group archive dates from
1981. Fidonet dates from 1983.

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. You were in a privileged
position in academia that few of us could enjoy. Tom Jennings' Fidonet
was a do-it-yourself solution, springing off the back of bulletin
boards.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK

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.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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

On 07/11/2013 10:47, David Rance wrote:

Ok, so we have a URG web site. Why don't we use it? Not much has changed
for years apart from keeping some of the FAQs up-to-date. In fact, it
probably suffers from a lot of the formatting and colour problems that
others have mentioned. It needs a good overhaul. We could keep a blog
going on that. There could be several blogs. Has anyone the vision to
make use of http://www.u-r-g.co.uk ? URG doesn't *have* to stay as a
Usenet group.


URG would be a good base to start from. As it stands the site is
read-only and has no features to support any dialogue. I've just looked
at Sacha's suggested site and that appears to have the same limitation
too - neither is designed for discussion. The u-r-g website would need
completely redesigning, perhaps with a phpbb forum being set up on it so
people could create threads and hold discussions.

Somewhat ironically, the site that does offer a means for people to
participate and post is the Garden Banter site! Much bemoaned by some of
the URG regulars for "stealing" posts made on URG. Those of us who
remain in URG could simply move and relocate there?!

--
David in Normandy.

On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 David in Normandy wrote:

On 07/11/2013 10:47, David Rance wrote:

Ok, so we have a URG web site. Why don't we use it? Not much has changed
for years apart from keeping some of the FAQs up-to-date. In fact, it
probably suffers from a lot of the formatting and colour problems that
others have mentioned. It needs a good overhaul. We could keep a blog
going on that. There could be several blogs. Has anyone the vision to
make use of http://www.u-r-g.co.uk ? URG doesn't *have* to stay as a
Usenet group.


URG would be a good base to start from. As it stands the site is
read-only and has no features to support any dialogue.

Quite! It was first designed by Cormaic before such facilities were
available.

I've just looked at Sacha's suggested site and that appears to have
the same limitation too - neither is designed for discussion. The u-r-g
website would need completely redesigning, perhaps with a phpbb forum
being set up on it so people could create threads and hold discussions.

I quite agree, which was what I was suggesting. What I was saying is
that we are not *using/developing* a facility which we already have at
our disposal.

Somewhat ironically, the site that does offer a means for people to
participate and post is the Garden Banter site! Much bemoaned by some
of the URG regulars for "stealing" posts made on URG. Those of us who
remain in URG could simply move and relocate there?!

Some already have (brave people). Doesn't Janet sometimes write from
Gardenbanter?

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK

In article ,
lid says...

I quite agree, which was what I was suggesting. What I was saying is
that we are not *using/developing* a facility which we already have at
our disposal.

What makes you think it's "at our disposal"? None of us owns it.

It was always webmastered exclusively by Cormaic and that burden is
what he very understandably declined to continue, years back. That's why
it has never been touched since, because none of us can.


Some already have (brave people). Doesn't Janet sometimes write from
Gardenbanter?

No, never. Kay does.

Janet

On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 Janet wrote:

In article ,
says...

I quite agree, which was what I was suggesting. What I was saying is
that we are not *using/developing* a facility which we already have at
our disposal.

What makes you think it's "at our disposal"?

Because it is!

It was always webmastered exclusively by Cormaic and that burden is
what he very understandably declined to continue, years back. That's why
it has never been touched since, because none of us can.

Sorry, as I've just written, yes we can! :-)


Some already have (brave people). Doesn't Janet sometimes write from
Gardenbanter?

No, never. Kay does.

Ah, thanks for the correction.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK