rec.models.rockets
 

I'm splitting off a thread from discussion started here http://forums.rocketshoppe.com/showthread.php?t=13593

Is Usenet Dead? I'd say, yes, it is pretty much dead. At least it is for rocketry folks. I spent a little while reading about what people have been saying about the death of Usenet and its history. Major ISPs and vendors like Microsoft have been pulling the plug on newsnet feeds. I read that the first Usenet server at Duke University was shutdown in 2010. Looks dead to me.

The spam got bad, and is still really bad today. I think what really killed it are the binaries - pirated software and porn, especially child pornography. Never more has there been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy (thanks Obi).

Google has all the archives for all the Usenet groups for all time. It's all there for as long as Google feels like making the archives publicly available.

A couple years ago at a rocket launch, someone asked me about the rec.models.rockets FAQ. My response was pretty much, "uh..yeah...what about it?" He said, why don't you update it? Update it? I'm surprised that the FAQ server was still posting it because I thought I shut it down a while back. I remember now that the guy asked me to at least keep Parts 00 and 03 alive, which I did. But I pulled the plug on even that yesterday. Maybe I'll edit the FAQ to take out the obsolete information and post it occasionally. I particularly want to take out the language that suggests that the FAQ is somehow still a living document compiled from a vibrant community of rocketry enthusiasts. It isn't. It's pretty much dead. Last real thread was from August of 2013, so there are some diehards left out there. I'll bet that none of them need a FAQ to refer to.

-Wolf

So Google does more than archive, you can post too. I just replied to Jerry's original suggestion of BFF from back in 1996. Weird.

Posting that felt like some episode of the Twilight Zone. Like I wandered into a ghost town and people were living there.

See what I started? :o

Troublemaker, me!? :rolleyes:

See! See! Now you're getting it! THAT, is rmr. Where crazy is normal and nothing is as it seems... or is it?

:eek: Kurtschachner, are you the "Kurt" that was nuts about chickens? :eek:

Randy
www.vernarockets.com
https://www.facebook.com/RocketBabeDustStorm

LMAO, not that I recall.

Nuts how?

I deleted my two posts when I realized you could see my email address. Hopefully they were really deleted, I don't need anyone describing what I can do with my rockets.

I have a solution. Post a fully updated and constantly reviewed FAQ to a website to a stable URL. Post the URL to FAQ part 00. Reference to widely commonly available info being okay. Nobody has ONLY usenet access anymore. It costs to access it now thanks to common ISP's deprecating it. Adjust to reality given your unique access to being maintainer for rec.models.rockets FAQ 00 and 03 and many others. Same thing, replace the text with web URL's.

You could have done it all along, but only realized it now, all these many years later . . .

BFF (Buying Frenzy Fad) was a good idea then, I implemented it with great success, and it is a better idea now that the internet has killed brick and mortar. BFF YORF and spam TRF and ROL with it too. Maybe even TRA and NAR lists!

I nominate Featherweight as my first BFF for 2014. [some bitch renamed it best friends forever]

Just Jerry

The guy knew every chicken joke in the universe and even flew a rubber chicken. Made me laugh all the time.

Randy
www.vernarockets.com
https://www.facebook.com/RocketBabeDustStorm

Man, I just had a thought for those who were a part of rmr... can you imagine if GH had been around back then... :chuckle: The exchanges between him and the French guy. Jean Luc wasn't it? Talk about "blow the lid off!"

It would have been interesting back then to know how many of the guys involved in the all out flame wars, if they had grandfathers that were either sheep hearders or cattlmen.

Hatfield/McCoy?

Punkin' Head Martin?

Randy
www.vernarockets.com
https://www.facebook.com/RocketBabeDustStorm

Jerry, I can understand a certain fondness or sense of nostalgia for r.m.r. and maybe even the FAQ, but r.m.r. is dead. The r.m.r. FAQ would no longer be an r.m.r. FAQ if one does as you suggest. It would be something different. The r.m.r. FAQ is a historical document.

Besides, many instances (copies) of the r.m.r. FAQ are already archived at a stable place (Google) and a semi-stable place (Sven Knudsen's Ninfinger site).