[<<]Message[>>]    [<<]Author[>>]    [<<]Subject[>>]    [<<]Thread[>>]

Number   :  4384
Date     :  2003-04-20
Author   :  james sadler
Subject  :  Re: This discussion group.
Size(KB) :  7


 One issue is that there are numerous
computer users who don't have a clue about newsgroups.
People who are new to computing may miss out on
newsgroups for years. There are also many customers of
outfits like AOL who use email exclusively. I know the
senior community tends to be sort of like that.
Perhaps you simply want another email sevice if Yahoo
is advertizing too much.
--- meirman@e... wrote:
> At 03:53 AM 4/16/03 -0500, Kan Yabumoto wrote:
> >Hi, all:
> >
> >Since last June, our XXCOPY discussion group has
> been
> >the most popular group in its category (Backup). 
> But, I
> >just noticed that our group is no longer No. 1 in
> the
> >category any more. A relatively new group called
> >"Pocketpcwares" surpassed us in recent days :-(
> >
> >Still, the volume of the messages posted in our
> group
> >is much larger than most other groups. Looking
> back
> >the early days (first few weeks), I was really
> concerned
> 
> How long ago did this start?
> 
> >with the fate of this group. Now, it seems that
> >the membership is quite solid. Also, the annoying
> >spammer(s) who posted junk messages finally gave
> up.
> >
> >What I really appreciate is that many of the
> veteran
> >XXCOPY users with in-depth knowledge in how XXCOPY
> >works are helping newcomers in this group.
> >
> >Our membership has been steadily increasing (about
> >one new member per day on the average). So, a year
> >from now, we will see the member count reach the
> >1000 mark.
> >
> >On the other hand, when we view the archived
> messages
> >on its web page, we sometimes see the size of the
> >Yahoo advertising gradually increasing... So,
> >viewing the messages on the Yahoo web site is not
> >very good --- also, the web-page version removes
> >the original indentation of the text which
> sometimes
> >makes the post harder to read. From my
> perspective,
> >as the "owner/moderator", the group maintenance
> >hardly takes any of my time except that I try to
> >provide accurate answer to some tricky questions
> >(but that's besides the format of the venue). So,
> >this group is, in a way, pretty convenient.
> >
> >I wonder if it's time for us to consider making
> >this group to be one of the usenet newsgroups.
> >I'm quite ignorant about the mechanics of how a
> >newsgroup is formed, and maintained.
> 
> I'm going to try to discuss this neutrally. There
> are a lot of mailing
> lists that I wish were newsgroups instead, but,
> primarily because most
> threads are short, and partly because traffic is
> moderate, and because
> thread names are rarely if ever changed, I can keep
> track of all the
> threads. So wrt this list, I'm fairly neutral. 
> Also most people here
> quote what they are referring to. Most of the
> newsgroups I read people
> have use good formatting, but on the non-technical
> mailing lists, it's a
> jungle. This list is by not.
> 
> >My first question is that XXCOPY is not just a pure
> >freeware but it is a commercial product. Maybe,
> >this fact alone may not go well with the otherwise,
> >product-neutral (non-commercial) nature of most
> >newsgroups.
> 
> But there are a lot of commercial products that have
> newsgroups, two for
> Agent, one for Eudora, a couple dozen for Netscape,
> there used to be dozens
> for Symantec/Norton until they switched to their own
> website, and there are
> hundreds for Microsoft Products. Trumpet tcp/ip
> dialer had 7, but the
> product is no longer popular. Plus many others for
> products I don't own.
> All of these are on the Erols.com news server, even
> though the Microsoft
> groups are on some Microsoft server, and Netscape
> has its own server. I
> think I can read this groups on both their server
> and the Erols server, but
> I don't know exactly how the whole thing works. The
> others I named have no
> special server afaik.
> 
> >I believe Google's (and other services') archives
> >on a newsgroup is probably more complete than that
> >of the Yahoo group's.
> 
> Google's, absolutely. In addition, one can click on
> the message id in
> several news readers and be routed straight to the
> same post within
> Groups.google.com. Using "Newsdde.exe". Thene can
> view the whole thread.
> 
> Search abilities are much better -- date ranges,
> optional and required
> search terms and searching on exact phrases.
> Although if one specifies one
> or a set of newsgroups, it doesn't actually limit
> the search to that set of
> groups. I wrote to them about this when they were
> in Beta, but they didn't
> change it. Still, I haven't tested it, but if I
> were to include the
> newsgroup name in the search terms, that might well
> limit it to just that
> group,
> 
> And when you find one post, you can then read the
> whole thread in
> groups.google. AFAICT, that's not true with Yahoo
> lists. When it says
> "sort by thread" Yahoo only means sort the articles
> currently showing on
> one screen's worth of headers by thread. In Yahoo,
> at the bottom, you can
> click on posts in reply to the one you are looking
> at, but you can't just
> scroll through the whole thread. (BTW, as an aside,
> people reading Yahoo
> lists on-line know the sequential number of the
> article they are reading,
> but those who get the articles by email do not.)
> 
> >Any comments by someone with the know-how on this
> >subject? What are the pros and cons of such a
> move?
> 
> Personally I don't have any cons except that some
> others don't seem to want
> it.
> 
> Lists on Agent seems to take less attention from me
> than email lists.
> Maybe that because one can set the articles to be
> deleted automatically
> when they are older than whatever number of days one
> sets. And the
> articles still exist on my ISP for 30 or so days,
> whether I download or
> not. When I go out of town, I have to suspend the
> mailing of some mailing
> lists because since I won't be downloading my mail,
> my mailbox can fill up.
> Then I have to read the mailing list on Yahoo if at
> all, and I find that
> much slower and more inconvenient than downloading
> them.
> 
> With Agent and Free Agent one only has to click once
> to dl new headers, and
> one can have different preferences for each
> newsgroup. One preference
> settable for each ng is whether or not to download
> bodies for every header
> downloaded "Retrieve bodies for all new messages". 
> So that's just one
> click total. When I only had on my list ng's I read
> regularly, I would use
> the one click/download headers for all groups, and
> it would then download
> articles for any groups I had it set for.
> 
> >Also, is there a convenient way to receive a
> >notification email when someone posts a message
> >at the newsgroup? 
> 
> When I had a much slower modem, I used to download
> headers for all groups
> (one click), and while I did that, I would either be
> reading email or
> reading the first few articles in the first group at
> the top of the group
> list. But with my fast modem, I usually pick and
> choose which group I
> download for. A message shows at the bottom of the
> screen. "Retrieving up
> to 33 new headers for news.group.name." It says "up
> to" because
> occasionally there is a missing article and
> subtracting the previous ending
> number from the current ending number doesn't give
> exactly the right answer.
> 
> Agent has about 20 levels of indentation, so that
> one 
=== message truncated ===


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com



This message if part of XXCOPY's message Archive.
The archive contains all the messages posted at Yahoo!Groups: XXCOPY.