Usenet: They hardly knew yee

Ever more ISPs are dropping their complimentary Usenet subscriptions.
And people seem increasingly getting fed up with the ever greater
encroachment of the rabble-rousing rabble, disrupting for disruption's
sake, the look at me types, a worsening of a long trend made possible by
Usenet's wonderful freedom, its flip side. But the paltry number of
posts per day in RCC these days, what, about five a day on average, the
lowest I've ever seen, is mostly the fault of those who have left.

Where have they gone? I miss some, not others. Short list of the AWOL
with a little help from Google Groups:

* Barry Kutner -- local show buddy who got fed up with the dark side of
numismatics, not just RCC
* John Carney -- another local show buddy who may be sailing around the
world right now, maybe looking for sunken treasure, maybe not
* Fred A. Murphy -- old-time collector/dealer of lots of things who knew
lots about the coin business
* Stujoe -- off running his CoinPeople site, or is it now the Stujoe
Collection? or both?
* Phil DeMayo -- getting his law degree no doubt
* Alan Williams -- too many rolls of 2009 cents from the bank to go through
* Eric Tillery -- health problems?
* Steven Preston -- good doc with justifiably bad temper and lots of
Morgans and insights
* R.W. Julian -- bona fide numismatist and uber knowledgeable guy off to
less tempestuous waters
* Tom DeLorey -- another numismatist who appears to have been put off
the by increasing rough and tumble
* Alan Herbert -- yet another numismatist who no longer dares to come here
* A.Gent -- was anything but and changed his handle later
* Larry Calder -- off to a better place than this life

Lots of others too. Changing (Internet) world. More splintered, as with
television. Still lots of community, but you sometimes have to look harder.

--

Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos

Reid Goldsborough wrote:

Where have they gone? I miss some, not others. Short list of the AWOL
with a little help from Google Groups:

* A.Gent -- was anything but and changed his handle later

....because no-one appreciated the *silver* pun in the name :-(

I'm sure you didn't find my continual corrections of your silly assertions
very gentlemanly, but what the hey. Like most folk, I've just grown bored
at the repetitious junk posted here. I still skim most days, and will
answer any genuine questions where I can help, but...

Since so many people are anxious to believe Internet-spawned rubbish,
there's not much profit in trying to correct it.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

So feel free, Reid, to misuse metallurgical terms (I believe "eutectic" was
your most recent malaprop) or to claim that wire brushes can melt coin
surfaces (etc. etc. ad. inf.) - I probably won't be there to harass you.

....but I might...

--
Jeff R.

"Reid Goldsborough" wrote in message
...
Ever more ISPs are dropping their complimentary Usenet subscriptions. And
people seem increasingly getting fed up with the ever greater encroachment
of the rabble-rousing rabble, disrupting for disruption's sake, the look
at me types, a worsening of a long trend made possible by Usenet's
wonderful freedom, its flip side. But the paltry number of posts per day
in RCC these days, what, about five a day on average, the lowest I've ever
seen, is mostly the fault of those who have left.

Apparently, there's little else that needs to be known about coins.
Most all questions have been answered by now. The more chatty types have
migrated to Facebook or Twitter. All that's left here are the daily Googled
news reports, the occasional ForSale ads, and meaningless posts like this.

Meanwhile, just continue to ponder the old RCC, the Oldsmobile, and that
little rubber hose we ran our bikes over at the gas station just to make the
bell ring and the attendant come out.

On Apr 1, 7:37*am, "Bruce Remick" wrote:


* * Apparently, there's little else that needs to be known about coins.
Most all questions have been answered by now. *The more chatty types have
migrated to Facebook or Twitter. *All that's left here are the daily Googled
news reports, the occasional ForSale ads, and meaningless posts like this..

* * Meanwhile, just continue to ponder the old RCC, the Oldsmobile, and that
little rubber hose we ran our bikes over at the gas station just to make the
bell ring and the attendant come out.

Usenet is a valuable resource where you can post without fear of being
censored or banned
by some "moderator" of a corporate site for saying something that puts
the host corporation
in a bad light. Posters on blogs and nonprofit websites risk
offending the egos or prejudices
of the owner, and may likewise find themselves banned.

Ebay has message boards, but takes adverse action against members for
REPORTING scams!

Of course, for decades it has been
known that the coin trade publications will not "bite the hand that
feeds them."

The downside is that the openness of Usenet also lets in the trolls
who relish in causing
disruption.


----
Frank Provasek Rare Coins
http://www.frankcoins.com Ebay FRANKCOINS
Member ANA, Texas Numismatic Assoc, Texas Coin Dealers Assoc,
PCGS, NGC, & ANACS authorized dealer, Texas Auctioneer Lic 11259

"Frank" wrote in message
...
The downside is that the openness of Usenet also lets in the trolls who
relish in causing disruption.


Fwankie, Fwankie, Fwankie, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Where else could you spin your paranoid conspiracy tales about how the
entire numismatic community is out to get you and your eBay auctions?
I forget, are you the professional numismatist you claim to be on eBay
or the engineer you claim to be on Amazon? I'm cornfused!

"Bob F." wrote in message
...
"Frank" wrote in message
...
The downside is that the openness of Usenet also lets in the trolls who
relish in causing disruption.


Fwankie, Fwankie, Fwankie, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Where else could you spin your paranoid conspiracy tales about how the
entire numismatic community is out to get you and your eBay auctions?
I forget, are you the professional numismatist you claim to be on eBay or
the engineer you claim to be on Amazon? I'm cornfused!

Case in point.

Frank wrote:

On Apr 1, 7:37 am, "Bruce Remick" wrote:


Apparently, there's little else that needs to be known about coins.
Most all questions have been answered by now. The more chatty types have
migrated to Facebook or Twitter. All that's left here are the daily Googled
news reports, the occasional ForSale ads, and meaningless posts like this.

Meanwhile, just continue to ponder the old RCC, the Oldsmobile, and that
little rubber hose we ran our bikes over at the gas station just to make the
bell ring and the attendant come out.

Usenet is a valuable resource where you can post without fear of being
censored or banned
by some "moderator" of a corporate site for saying something that puts
the host corporation
in a bad light. Posters on blogs and nonprofit websites risk
offending the egos or prejudices
of the owner, and may likewise find themselves banned.

Ebay has message boards, but takes adverse action against members for
REPORTING scams!

Of course, for decades it has been
known that the coin trade publications will not "bite the hand that
feeds them."

The downside is that the openness of Usenet also lets in the trolls
who relish in causing
disruption.

----
Frank Provasek Rare Coins
http://www.frankcoins.com Ebay FRANKCOINS
Member ANA, Texas Numismatic Assoc, Texas Coin Dealers Assoc,
PCGS, NGC, & ANACS authorized dealer, Texas Auctioneer Lic 11259

Maybe, just maybe, once the free usenet is gone the trolls will be gone
too.

I use Giganews now. http://www.giganews.com/

The service is great and the cost is minimal. Trolls may not want to
pay.

JAM

Bruce Remick wrote:

Apparently, there's little else that needs to be known about coins.
Most all questions have been answered by now. The more chatty types have
migrated to Facebook or Twitter. All that's left here are the daily Googled
news reports, the occasional ForSale ads, and meaningless posts like this.

You say this is a meaningless post, yet you respond. It's hardly
meaningless, discussing the nature of what we're using to discuss coins,
how it has evolved over the years.

I have to take issue as well with your remarkable statement that there's
little else that's needed to be known about coins. Some scientist a few
years before 1905 said the same thing about science, and I suppose
people have always been saying similar things about lots of subjects.
There's lots left to be learned about coins, though with individuals the
longer you're around the less there's typically left to learn and with
coin types the newer they are the less uncertainty and debatability that
typically exists.

Agree with you about social networking sites. There's also the
blogosphere, with many people, particularly younger people, liking a
place to call their own where they can hold forth and let people in as
they like. I still like the open commons approach of Usenet and e-mail
lists, even moderated ones, over blogging as group conversation.

The Googled news reports by stonej and Arizona Coin Collector are the
best aspects of RCC right now. The worst aspect is the three or so
attack guys using anonymous handles who have pretty much taken over and
ruined things. One guy goes after a dealer here every time he posts with
meaningless attacks. Others seem to randomly attack people, without wit
or intelligence, telling them "Shut the f**k up!" and so on when they
doesn't like their posts, newcomers, old-timers, doesn't matter. A good
number of truly knowledgeable collectors, dealers, and academic types
(and not only the ones I mentioned in my initial post) have left RCC
specifically because of the attack guys, because they've been
meaninglessly attacked this way, and I've heard from several who still
occasionally lurk, when they've responded to posts of mine through email
rather than publicly and said they were doing this because (they felt)
RCC has become an attack group.

You still have a few advanced collectors such as Mr. Jaggers who try to
help out wherever they can. You also still have Those Who Can Never Be
Wrong, arguing and arguing no matter what, with only a minority of
people confident or honest enough to concede points, but this has always
been an aspect of online communications, one of its aspects like flaming
that's much more prominent than with in-person communication. But it's
the attack stuff, always an aspect, that's gotten worse.

It's kind of sad, the way things are here, this group having lost not
only most of its posters and posts but also most of its vibrancy and
usefulness. At least Anka is still here.

--

Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos

Reid Goldsborough wrote:
Ever more ISPs are dropping their complimentary Usenet subscriptions.
And people seem increasingly getting fed up with the ever greater
encroachment of the rabble-rousing rabble, disrupting for disruption's
sake, the look at me types, a worsening of a long trend made possible
by Usenet's wonderful freedom, its flip side. But the paltry number of
posts per day in RCC these days, what, about five a day on average,
the lowest I've ever seen, is mostly the fault of those who have left.

Where have they gone? I miss some, not others. Short list of the AWOL
with a little help from Google Groups:
[list snipped]

I don't think you're going to find any organization or club that keeps its
same members year after year, decade after decade. Each of us goes through
life facing this challenge and that, which divert our attention and our
treasure from things we once held dear. As for the alleged influx of
trolls, well, think back five years (that's my tenure here) and you'll see
two individuals who at that time constantly stalked two of our regulars. A
quick flick of the killfile switch and zipzap, they're gone, if you're so
inclined.

A lot of the individuals in your list left during and immediately after the
lawsuit, and several more at the time of the alt.life.sucks affair. In the
former, some of them may have brought on their own troubles, and in the
latter, well, look at society at large, and all of a sudden those guys seem
like the guys in your hunting club. It takes all kinds. Thank goodness.

The person I miss the most is Amistad, who has found other interests to
occupy his hours and resources.

The persons I miss the least are those who leave and then briefly return to
tell us what a bunch of cads we all are, and how much more civil is the talk
on this or that moderated board, then disappear for good. About them I say,
thank God and Greyhound they're gone.

James

Mr. Jaggers wrote:

The person I miss the most is Amistad, who has found other interests to
occupy his hours and resources.

Larry used to run the swaps, which I miss as well. It was a thankless
and time consuming job that he took on, for the benefit of others.
Yeah...I miss Amistad too.