"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
Reid Goldsborough wrote:
While I concur with your positions regarding PCV, whizzing, and
collecting counterfeits, which you review in this recent trio of
posts, I fail to see the educational value in all-of-a-sudden taking
potshots at rcc people

I didn't mention a single name. I focused on the issues (coin holders,
coin doctoring, and counterfeit collecting) and the behavior (how
truth gets compromised and misinformation gets spread). I'd suggest
that one core reason that RCC is such a small shadow of what it used
to be, along with the anonymous flamers, is the spew of off-topic
chitchatting with virtually every thread that very quickly steers it
from a discussion of numismatic substance into whatever somebody like
you wants to chitchat about. Typically people like this carelessly
just quote the entire thread before adding their chitchat at the end,
which forces scrolling and makes it tedious for others to see if
there's anything worth following. So they stop following. Threads
degenerate as much from this as from flaming. This is not to say that
digression and tangents should be outlawed or whatever. Free world
and all. In the best moderated discussion groups chitchatty
digression is controlled by gentle persuasion and tactful
interjections. This doesn't work, for the most part, in unmoderated
groups, with people just ignoring this. Another key reason for RCC's
decline is the decline of Usenet in general and the discontinuation
of Usenet feeds by major ISPs, though all other things being equal
there are fairly easy work-arounds for this.

I don't know enough of the posting history here to comment on James' points,
but after 26 years on Internet forums and newsgroups, I do know enough to
take issue with some of your (Reid's) views on r.c.c. as an ongoing froup.

You have cited the standard explanations for why a particular newsgroup
would go into apparent decline. They're logical and valid up to a point.
But only up to a point because there's something missing. I have a few
ideas on the missing "X Factor" that I'll get to later.

First, let me give you a contrasting situation by pointing you to the
newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, which I only recently began following. It is
chartered for a subject that is at least as narrow as numismatics. Arguably
it is even a much more narrow area of interest than coin collecting. Who
reads any books these days, let alone SF? Its title does not invite kooks
and ******s in the way that newsgroups such as alt.paranoia and alt.politics
do. But unlike r.c.c., it averages 300-400 posts a day. Most threads start
out as being on topic, but not surprisingly they soon wander off into
educated, animated discussions (with the occasional flame war) on tangential
topics. Oddly enough, only 2-4 of the hundreds of daily posts are new
threads. The rest are all those lively, generally interesting, generally
educated, continuing discussions of OT topics. They go on and on because
they attract participants and keep them coming back to r.a.s.w.

For the record, r.a.s.w. suffers from all the "defects" that you cite as the
downfall of r.c.c. So why 300-400 posts a day - which also runs counter to
your logical but insufficient observation on the general decline of Usenet -
versus the r.c.c. traffic of a few dozen posts? Also for the record, in the
2+ years that I've been a subscriber, r.c.c. hasn't exactly been a magnet
for drive-by kooks and flamers. There have been a few, and we do have a few
intermittently abusive regulars, but you'd have to be pretty thin-skinned to
let that bother you. If r.c.c. in its current relatively pest-free
condition (knock on wood) isn't bringing back the old crowd, then it's got
to be something else that's keeping r.c.c. from being "appointment Internet"
for them.

Also for the record, part of the explanation for r.a.s.w.'s popularity does
lie in the subject matter. "Real" SF is the literature of ideas. So
naturally, any newsgroup on SF books will initially attract more of the
articulate thinkers who like to kick ideas around. But attracting is one
thing, keeping them is another. If r.a.s.w. stuck strictly to its chartered
topic, my guess is that its traffic would be at or even below the level of
r.c.c. Written SF is the meat and potatoes of r.a.s.w. but there also is a
"special sauce" that keeps them coming back for more. The "special sauce"
is intelligent, articulate discussion of OT spin-offs that invite
participation by others.

If it were not for a few of the regulars here who enjoy OT, r.c.c. would
offer little more than a palid pedestrian diet of plain coin talk, strictly
meat and potatoes without any sauce. Even with the few inveterate,
incorrigible OT'ers we do have, r.c.c. is hardly a Grand Central Station for
lively Internet discussion. The original dot-com entrepreneurs mostly went
bust with their goofy "new economics" business models but they were at least
partly right in one respect: On the Internet, survival does depend on
attracting the eyeballs. And that requires content, be it products,
services, or interesting reading.

You know and admit that OT has a place as part of the glue that binds
participants together, and conversely as the grease that that keeps the
newsgroup machinery humming. Yet... your admissions do not obscure the fact
that you are bringing this up as a thinly disguised whine. If OT really
doesn't bother you (which I doubt) then just shut up about it. If it does
bother you, then shut up and either learn to skim and skip without rancor
the way most of us do, or beef up your killfile until you can only see the
handful of posters who never go OT. And please, stop limiting yourself to
the same litany of necessary but not sufficient reasons for why r.c.c. isn't
the r.a.s.w. of coin collecting. There's more to it than that - and at
least some of the "more" is the need for more of the very OT component that
you bemoan.

I'm have no history with you and I'm not trying to dump on you, Reid. If
anything, I read and enjoy some of your specialized mini-essays here. But
you're way out in left field with your complaining about OT and with your
limited explanations for why r.c.c. is not a powerhouse newsgroup. We have
met the enemy and he is us.

- mazorj
"Admonishments written while you wait."