Stats comp.os.linux.misc last 7 days 1113

On Sun, 07 May 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc, in article

Anecdotal evidence - yeah, that looks about right. I see some replies via groups.google that contain helpful answers, but not that many.

But then, how many posters are even aware that some news groups are not very active (which would be apparent if they looked at posting dates in representative articles, but that doesn't happen that often) or that it helps to post to either the standard big-eight groups

compton ~$ grep linux big-eight.list.04.15.06 cut -f1 column comp.os.linux.advocacy comp.os.linux.misc comp.os.linux.alpha comp.os.linux.networking comp.os.linux.announce comp.os.linux.portable comp.os.linux.answers comp.os.linux.powerpc comp.os.linux.development.apps comp.os.linux.security comp.os.linux.development.system comp.os.linux.setup comp.os.linux.embedded comp.os.linux.x comp.os.linux.hardware comp.os.linux.xbox comp.os.linux.m68k compton ~$

which should be carried on every properly configured news server, OR the appropriate alt.os.linux.$DISTRIBUTION group

compton ~$ grep '^alt-.os-.linux-.' .newsrc column alt.os.linux.best alt.os.linux.mandriva alt.os.linux.caldera alt.os.linux.redhat alt.os.linux.corel alt.os.linux.slackware alt.os.linux.debian alt.os.linux.smoothwall alt.os.linux.gentoo alt.os.linux.storm alt.os.linux.libranet alt.os.linux.suse alt.os.linux.lindows alt.os.linux.turbolinux alt.os.linux.mandrake compton ~$

which are carried by some BUT NOT ALL news servers. People also post to 'alt.linux' and 'alt.os.linux' but posting to the appropriate group is likely to have your post seen by more people who are willing-able to help. If the poster's isn't comfortable posting in English, there are a large number of groups in other languages. Grabbing Red Hat as just one example, I see

alt.fr.os.redhat cz.comp.linux.redhat-cz alt.pl.comp.os.linux.redhat it.comp.os.linux.redhat

on my news server (and I suspect there are more), and that's not counting the national linux groups like 'be.comp.os.linux', 'ch.comp.os.linux', 'cn.comp.os.linux', 'cz.comp.linux' on through to 'uk.comp.os.linux' and 'yu.os.linux'.

I know there are people who normally help who are now kill-filing the groups.google postings. I haven't gotten to that stage yet (and it's but the 'spam-to-ham' (or 'noise-to-signal') ratio is getting fairly high. that will change - perhaps not.

More the pity, because they are posting from a freakin' search engine that would provide the answer to their question in seconds if they just use the damn thing.

I don't know if that's because it's well known and free (and a larger number of ISPs are no longer offering news service) or because they can be a major fool without having everyone at their ISP pointing at them and laughing. It's only those who know how to read the headers and haven't killfiles groups.google who are laughing.

Old guy