[mythtv-users] alt.video.ptv.mythtv

[Yeechang Lee]

devsk <funtoos at yahoo.com> says:
> I think fundamental reason for so much traffic is that there is no
> official good forum based central place for people to go to get some
> help. I can see if there was an official forum on mythtv.org, it
> would result in lot of network bandwidth saved for so many people.

Usenet yes, Webboards no! Usenet solved every single one of the
problems Webboards are still "solving" a decade or two ago, except
Spam, and good newsservers/news outlets like Google Groups have long
since pretty much taken care of the Spam problem on their own.

I have firsthand experience with the advantage of Usenet over peer
Webboards. alt.games.warcraft
(<URL:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.warcraft/>) is a
tremendously active and useful community of fans of Blizzard's
Warcraft games (especially World of Warcraft), with a couple hundred
new posts a day. While Blizzard operates an enormous array of online
Webboards, the quantity and quality of alt.games.warcraft's
discussions are so superior to the "official" boards that there's no
comparison.

The Usenet newsgroup alt.video.ptv.mythtv exists. It's not yet on
Google Groups, but I've requested it. It already exists on
news.individual.net--probably the most-popular independent "real"
newsserver in the world, and one which I can heartily recommend,
especially given its price of €10/year--and others. It's not very
active, probably because it's not yet on Google Groups, but the pace
has been picking up lately.

I know Isaac, as the listowner, is opposed to mail-to-news gateways,
which is a pity since that'd be the simplest way to make the
transition. However, I plan on "simulcasting" all my mythtv-users
messages to alt.video.ptv.mythtv. If others would do likewise (once
Google Groups starts carrying the group, if necessary), and
alt.video.ptv.mythtv is listed as a good resource at www.mythtv.org
and elsewhere, we could eventually turn it into the main MythTV
discussion venue. Those who aren't newsreader-savvy would be able to
use the Web-based, graphical, searchable, etc. Google Groups
interface, and the rest of us would be able to use our
state-of-the-art threading/scoring newsreaders.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US