misc stuff - free

Have you ever looked at USENET recently. Most groups are moribund. Other are full of irrelevant garbage. I recently considered submitting a request to close all UK groups apart from "uk.d-i-y" as that seems to contain questions and answers about everything from computer networking to open heart surgery, rendering the other useless. The UK usenet committee approved "uk.radio.amateur.moderated" so we had a spam free group, but refuse announcements so I still have to look at uk.adio.amateur to see announcements and so I also see the garbage. Newcomers don't understand that if they post in the unmoderated group , which they do because the don't want to wait for their post to be approved, that all that will happen is they will receive stupid un-moderated replies while the usual keyboard warriors hijack the thread and proceed to hurl personal abuse at each other. They decide USENET is not for them and toddle off to FACEBOOOK, and uk.radio.amateur.moderated remains pretty quiet. Even in my favourite group, "comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware" one or two threads have gone abusive. Yes its still there, and it has one or two interesting areas, but finding them can be hard work Sorry for the rant Dave G4UGM