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From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard on 16 Apr 2010 05:56
>
>
> Usenet is [...] recovering (very, very slowly) from Eternal September.
>
I agree with you that perpetual September seems to be in the process of
ending, albeit that there are several newsgroups that are still awash
with novices and one-shot posters. The problem with that is that the
people who have survived perpetual September, or who even knew no other
Usenet, often don't know much about the Usenet culture of the times
before perpetual September arrived, and only know of the extremes that
perpetual September forced upon the world. There's a lot of outright
rubbish that is now folk wisdom, that would have been almost laughed at
for being myopic and ill-conceived in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Here are some wise words written on Slashdot in November 2008:

> I've seen entire, vibrant groups taken down by one or two determined
> individuals and the idiots that feed them.
>
> Secondly, a lot of the smaller, niche groups are dying out because
> people won't obey the rules anymore. They post off topic stuff on the
> more popular groups rather than taking the time to hunt down the
> proper one.
>
There are at least two major Big 8 newsgroups that I can think of where
the trolls are now the only regulars, much to the loss of anyone else
coming upon the newsgroup. And the problem of posting in the wrong
group because one is too lazy to look up the right ones is if anything
an understatement on M. Rhyder128k's part. It's compounded very much by
the further problem that quite a lot of outright fools will whinge
whenever someone does move off-topic discussions to appropriate
newsgroups, because they were never inculcated with the Usenet norm of
proactively keeping on-topic, and instead act as if they are incapable
of the basics of reading and writing Usenet and treat Usenet as if it
were a helpdesk, where everything is "answering the OP's question" and
fixed with the same subjects and newsgroups forevermore.

As I said, a lot of such foolishness is sheer cluelessness derived from
folk wisdom, or simply learned behaviour when the only examples to learn
from were bad ones. One example: The correct notion that multi-posting
is bad, and cross-posting is preferred, has mutated as it has been
passed along by word of mouth and by example. Some people, who clearly
have no understanding of the mechanisms of Usenet at all, and thus of
the underlying difference between cross-posting and multi-posting that
makes the one bad and the other not, now confidently and aggressively
assert that cross-posting itself is bad. "It's the same message in
multiple newsgroups, therefore it's bad." is the oversimplistic
two-legs/four-legs mantra.

It's going to take a lot to rectify much of this, as the inertia is
considerable, most of the people with Clue in this regard aren't around
much any more, and (of course) Google Groups isn't much help now that
it's broken. Even Cecil Adams would be daunted at such a task. So
there's some doubt as to the "recovering from" part. (-:

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