-=> Quoting Danny Ceppa to Nancy Backus on 12-19-05  16:13 <=-   
      
    NB> it.  From what I can see, the genealogy newsgroups, especially most of   
    NB> the specialty ones likewise succumbed, only a few years later... the   
    NB> Internet's less community-oriented makeup made it even harder to keep   
    NB> a critical mass.  I read some of what's left via RIME gating to my main   
    NB> bbs, but I haven't really been able to take part in them.   
      
    DC> The i-net has taken away the personalism that was and is FIDO.     
      
   The newsgroups that seem to have managed to hang on with some degree of   
   flourishing are the ones in which the participants tended to act as   
   though it was a Fido echo, answering most in the newsgroup instead of   
   shooting off their replies via email privately, unless there were some   
   good reason to MAKE it private.  Gen.medieval has flourished, as it   
   became mostly a scholarly public forum, although not without a degree of   
   spam and trolls...  I have found some very good information there, even   
   without being able to actively participate in the group.   
      
   But by and large, the newgroups, even for genealogy, lost most of the   
   personality and personable-ness that had been the rule in the Fido   
   echos.  I had had my reservations as to whether the Inet was going to be   
   an improvement, it appears that time has justified those reservations.   
      
   ttyl          neb   
      
   ... Why don't potholes ever knock tires *into* alignment?   
      
   ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20   
      
   --- ViaMAIL!/WC v1.60d   
    * Origin: Chowdanet (401-724-4410) telnet://chowdanet.com  (1:323/120)