From: Brad Templeton (brad@main.templetons.com)
Date: Wed Oct 06 1999 - 18:00:58 CDT
On Thu, Oct 07, 1999 at 12:32:03AM +0200, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> Or maybe I should ask: are we going anywhere?
>
That's what's made me mostly bow out. This group has taken over 2
years now and the best it can agree on is a few tweaks here and
a few tweaks there, a very small number of new features (mostly
mine) and a lot of argument.
I certainly participated in and extended some of those arguments, but
it was in the mistaken belief that out of it we might actually bring
USENET into the 90s before the 90s were over.
We won't. We've fiddled while Rome burned. Deja News, a business
built around USENET, seems to be mostly trying to divorce itself from
USENET. ISPs consider USENET serving a burden they would rather be rid of.
Spammers, trollers, flamewars and just being too big have led large
online communities of USENET and onto web boards and their kin. Like
many, I'm ceasing to care.
Instead we've argued about how long a line can be, like it matters.
It doesn't.