AD: Scot-Cycling, list/newsgroup for Scottish leisure cyclists

[David Marsh]

Scot-Cycling: a mailing list/newsgroup for discussing cycling in Scotland, UK,
which may be of interest to readers of this newsgroup.

(This is intended to act as a complement to the newsgroup uk.rec.cycling
which many people find is too high-traffic to follow regularly)


'Scot-Cycling' is a group intended mainly for discussions of leisure
cycling, both onroad/touring and offroad/mountain biking. Visitors
seeking information to help plan cycling holidays in Scotland are
especially welcome to ask for advice. (However, please note this list
is not particularly intended for discussion of competitive or
sporting cycling.)



Scot-Cycling is available either as a mailing list via email:
(See: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scot-cycling/> to subscribe)

or as a newsgroup/"forum" through gmane:
at news.gmane.org
as gmane.culture.bicycle.scottish
(The following direct link will add the group to your newsreader:
<news://news.gmane.org/gmane.culture.bicycle.scottish>)
(See also: <http://news.gmane.org/gmane.culture.bicycle.scottish>)

NB: In order to be able to post to the group through gmane, you must
first subscribe to the mailing list in 'no-mail mode' via YahooGroups
as above.


(Note that gmane and YahooGroups make archives of postings to the group
available to the public. As on any public group on the internet, you are
advised to post using a 'disposable' or 'time-limited' email address to
reduce the risk of spam: eg, if you have your own domain or subdomain,
create an email address of the form '[email protected]' in addition
to your normal email address, and change this every year.

The email address you use to post to the group *must*, however, be valid
(and subscribed to the email list, even if only in 'no-mail mode').
This is to prevent spammers from posting to the group.)



There are a number of other groups related to cycling and cycle
campaigning in Scotland, please see:
<http://www.viewport.co.uk/cycleway/lists>



[This message is not intended as spam, as it is on-topic and non-commercial.
However, if you object to its posting, please *do* let me know.]

 

[JohnB]

David Marsh wrote:
>
> Scot-Cycling: a mailing list/newsgroup for discussing cycling in Scotland, UK,
> which may be of interest to readers of this newsgroup.
>
> (This is intended to act as a complement to the newsgroup uk.rec.cycling
> which many people find is too high-traffic to follow regularly)

How was this determined?
Was a survey of all users taken?

John B

 

[James Annan]

JohnB wrote:
> David Marsh wrote:
> >
> > Scot-Cycling: a mailing list/newsgroup for discussing cycling in
Scotland, UK,
> > which may be of interest to readers of this newsgroup.
> >
> > (This is intended to act as a complement to the newsgroup
uk.rec.cycling
> > which many people find is too high-traffic to follow regularly)
>
> How was this determined?
> Was a survey of all users taken?

Yes. But we didn't bother asking the obnoxioue pedants (um...apart from
me, obviously).



James

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>,
James Annan ('[email protected]') wrote:

> But we didn't bother asking the obnoxioue pedants

<pedant class="obnoxious">
That's 'obnoxious', Shirley.
</pedant>

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; not so much a refugee from reality, more a bogus
;; asylum seeker

 

[JohnB]

James Annan wrote:

> Yes. But we didn't bother asking the obnoxioue pedants (um...apart from
> me, obviously).
>
>

Apologies. I'm in a ****ly mood.
Yobs in car drove at my daughter [1] last night :-(

[1} who was walking on the pavement.

John B

 

[dkahn400]

JohnB wrote:

> Apologies. I'm in a ****ly mood.
> Yobs in car drove at my daughter [1] last night :-(
>
> [1} who was walking on the pavement.

And it wasn't even Friday night. :-(

Was she badly shaken?

--
Dave...

 

[JohnB]

dkahn400 wrote:
>
> JohnB wrote:
>
> > Apologies. I'm in a ****ly mood.
> > Yobs in car drove at my daughter [1] last night :-(
> >
> > [1} who was walking on the pavement.
>
> And it wasn't even Friday night. :-(
>
> Was she badly shaken?

Quite shook up.
She called the police and made a statement.

John B

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:42:41 +0000, JohnB <[email protected]> wrote in
message <[email protected]>:

>She called the police and made a statement.

I suspect I'd have made a few statements, too, under the
circumstances.


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:07:12 +0000, David Marsh
<[email protected]> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

>Scot-Cycling: a mailing list/newsgroup for discussing cycling in Scotland, UK,
>which may be of interest to readers of this newsgroup.

But which is posted twice because the poster knows it is spam and the
cancelbots will probably kill it.


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

 

[James Annan]

David Marsh wrote:


> Speaking as a fairly veteran user of usenet, there's usually been a
> tradition that occasional, non-commercial "adverts" are acceptable.
> If regular readers deem this to be annoying, I'll reduce the posting
> frequency.

It seems entirely reasonable to me.

James

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:15:48 +0000, David Marsh
<[email protected]> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

>> But which is posted twice because the poster knows it is spam and the
>> cancelbots will probably kill it.

>It shouldn't have been, unless something went horribly wrong with my
>cronjob somewhere.. I only see one copy.

My mistake - my reader threaded the two together so as to appear as if
it was the standard spammer tactic of posting a reply with the entire
contents repeated (cf. Tony Lance and other pondlife). The two have
the same timestamp /but/ precisely one month apart...

For some reason this got threaded as if it were a new discussion,
rather than a reply to an existing discussion up at the top of the
list, which is sorted by thread starting date.


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, David Marsh
('[email protected]') wrote:

> And, if there is a groundswell of opinion that such postings are
> inappropriate, I will quietly slope away.. Can't say fairer that that!

OK, in my opinion it's inappropriate, because you're using a public
forum to undermine public forums by privatising the discussion. As you
personally well know, Usenet is under attack from all angles now, and
is for the most part gradually dying. Uk.rec.cycling remains a healthy
group with a healthy amount of traffic, but it will not do so if it
gets split up into little private coteries. Then there will be nowhere
publicly on the net with the level of expertise we have here of UK
cycling experience for newcomers to tap, and that would be a loss for
everyone.

Usenet is, in my opinion, one of the valuable information commons which
we should all put effort into protecting, because when it is lost we
will all be poorer. This is, of course, only my personal opinion, but
it is why I have not and will not join scot-cycling.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; "If I were a Microsoft Public Relations person, I would probably
;; be sobbing on a desk right now" -- Rob Miller, editor, /.

 

[Tony Raven]

David Marsh wrote:
>
> If I could set up a new newsgroup (eg, scot.rec.cycling), then I would,
> but I can't (and I suspect uk.rec.cycling.scotland wouldn't pass as
> there seems to be a tendency nowadays for groups not wanting to create
> subgroups (I suspect because some people don't fully understand the
> concept [1], nor how to correctly use crossposting); but I do remember
> the relief all round when the increasingly over-heavy and unreadable
> rec.bicycles was split into its component subgroups..)
>

There are regular suggestions (well every year or so) to set up specific
newsgroups - uk.rec.mountain-biking or uk.rec.touring etc - for the
specialist interest groups. They are usually talked down because urc is
a pretty broad church and it does not have enough traffic to survive
fragmentation, nor would the fragments have enough traffic to survive.
At present urc is a nice size; big enough to be worth visiting regularly
but not so big as to be a pain with the number of posts to read on each
visit.

Personally I'm with Simon. If you want to set up another forum, as
Singletrack and Bikemagic have done for the mtb community, then feel
free to do so and good luck but please do it by building up by
reputation, not by head hunting in existing groups.

Otherwise that way lies the fate of Scott & Bikereader -
http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/SAM/urcs.html ;-)

Tony

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, David Marsh
('[email protected]') wrote:

> [Followups re-expanded, as I think it's relevant.
> Apologies for the length, to anybody uninterested.]
>
>
> Hi Simon,
>
> Simon Brooke wrote in scot.general
> about: Re: AD: Scot-Cycling, list/newsgroup for Scottish leisure
> cyclists
>
>> in message <[email protected]>, David Marsh
>> ('[email protected]') wrote:
>>
>>> And, if there is a groundswell of opinion that such postings are
>>> inappropriate, I will quietly slope away.. Can't say fairer that
>>> that!
>>
>> OK, in my opinion it's inappropriate, because you're using a public
>> forum to undermine public forums by privatising the discussion.
>
> If that's what I was doing, I'd be inclined to agree with you.
> But I don't think I am. (Well, I would say that, etc..)
>
> If I could set up a new newsgroup (eg, scot.rec.cycling), then I
> would, but I can't

You could issue a Request For Discussion compliant with the procedure at
<URL:http://scot.news-admin.org/how_to_propose.html>

And then I, wearing my hat as [email protected], would have to
get hold of the committee, which (as you will remember) includes you,
and we'd have to issue a Call For Votes, and we'd see whether there was
a demand. If there was, I'd then have to issue an newgroup message.
Yes, I'm sure there would be problems as (as you know) this mechanism
has never actually been used, but we would sort them out.

> I see gmane as nicely complementing the wider usenet, rather than
> helping to destroy it. (If anything, gmane is helping to make the
> concept of newsgroups known to the post-Septemberites who've never
> heard of the concept). And something as neatly organised as gmane is
> surely a zillion times better than the mass of disparate unorganised
> low-signal web forumz out there that so many of today's newbies do so
> misguidedly love..?

Well, and that raises the problem I'd see with a scot.cycling group.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a nationalist, I tend where practical to
prefer Scottish solutions to British ones, but I don't believe there's
enough 'signal' in Scottish cycling at present to sustain a separate
group (if there is, all the more reason that it should be
scot.cycling). I'm aware that this group (uk.rec.cycling) is high
traffic and that there's an excessive amount of off-topic posts (of
which I'm at least as guilty as any), but lively, active groups with
vibrant communities have a much better chance of riding out and
surviving the sort of sustained trolling that have effectively
destroyed scot.politics.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

' ' <------- this blank intentionally spaced left

 

[Ross Hamilton]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 19:46:36 +0000, David Marsh wrote in
<[email protected]>, seen in uk.rec.cycling:

> and there are some 'obsessives' among we usenauts who want to
> read "everything" (maybe that's just uk.railway?)

[warning: off-topic for uk.r.c]

Err, no.

uk.railway split discussions and strawpolls generally failed because
the amount of thread drift and cross-topic discussion is so high that
threads would end up being crossposted between any conceivable
sub-groups, given that most posters come from a broad church with
interests covering the whole range of possible railway topics .

Oh, and the fact that the uk.railway name would likely be lost
(according to those who know how usenet works), leading the group to
be renamed uk.transport.rail, was always also felt to be a big
downside of any split.


It's noticeable that since a certain uk.r poster threw his rattle out
of his pram (IIRC over being asked to comply with the group posting
norms) and ceased posting there, there have been no further calls for
uk.r to be split.

--
Ross, in Lincoln
Reply-to address will bounce; replace "junk-trap" with "me" for e-mail

 

[sam]

Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> If you want to set up another forum, as
> Singletrack and Bikemagic have done for the mtb community, then feel
> free to do so and good luck but please do it by building up by
> reputation, not by head hunting in existing groups.
>
> Otherwise that way lies the fate of Scott & Bikereader -
> http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/SAM/urcs.html ;-)
>
> Tony

I didn't really look at it as headhunting; I wasn't trying to get
anyone to leave the newsgroup. (I may be splitting hairs here). In any
case, I apologise that my methods annoyed people.

PS. Bikereader.com hasn't suffered any particularly dire fate other
than the gentle repose of static content. (I'm tired.) You're
referring to the Freewheeling forum, which indeed failed to spark
sufficient interest, lurching around for a few months until I
mercifully pulled the plug. I'm no good at running forums. Kudos to
those who are.

 

[Fat Bloke]

On 29 Mar 2005 07:14:54 -0800, [email protected] (sam) wrote:

>Tony Raven <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
>> If you want to set up another forum, as
>> Singletrack and Bikemagic have done for the mtb community, then feel
>> free to do so and good luck but please do it by building up by
>> reputation, not by head hunting in existing groups.
>>
>> Otherwise that way lies the fate of Scott & Bikereader -
>> http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/SAM/urcs.html ;-)
>>
>> Tony
>
>I didn't really look at it as headhunting; I wasn't trying to get
>anyone to leave the newsgroup. (I may be splitting hairs here). In any
>case, I apologise that my methods annoyed people.
>
>PS. Bikereader.com hasn't suffered any particularly dire fate other
>than the gentle repose of static content. (I'm tired.) You're
>referring to the Freewheeling forum, which indeed failed to spark
>sufficient interest, lurching around for a few months until I
>mercifully pulled the plug. I'm no good at running forums. Kudos to
>those who are.
People can always try "The Bunch" -
http://www.johnstone-wheelers.co.uk/phpBB2/index.php

------------------------------------------------------------

This post did not necessarily reflect my opinions. So there.
Pull the pins out to reply direct.