On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 09:21:08 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:


"jamesgangnc" wrote in message
om...


There are really very few on topic posts anymore. Newsgroups are
declining in use. Some of the others I frequent also have dropped off a
bit over the years. Unfortunately there is no way to tell in rec.boats if
on topic participation would pick up if the bs level dropped.


I read somewhere recently that newsgroups will become a thing of the past in
the not to distant future. The original concept and intent has long since
been lost and the culture has changed.
Part of the change has been brought on by faster computers, higher
bandwidths and speed.
One does not have to carefully construct brief posts anymore in order to
participate at turtle-like uploading/downloading speeds.

The other big influence was when the web based sites started automatic feeds
of newsgroups to their forums. This lead further to things like "Google
Groups" and such where the original culture of Usenet is totally lost.
There are many users of Google Groups who don't realize or know what a
newsgroup is.

Eisboch

I hope not. There are some groups out there that provide a lot of good
information at a reasonable price.

This is one of them, it just requires some high waders.