Well, here it is again approaching winter and my discontent rages as always.
I see that ARBR is now as dead as a door nail and even the redoubtable Tom
Sherman seems to have given up on the group. What has happened to ARBR I see
happening to all the other cycling newsgroups. They are becoming nothing
more nor less than chat rooms. This was perhaps the destiny of all Usenet
groups since none of it was ever moderated.
Tom Sherman was the heart and soul of ARBR for many years. He was expert on
the subject of recumbents and I placed him right along side of Bob Bryant of
RCN. You could come to this group and learn things about recumbents that
were not covered by RCN. All that has changed drastically in the past couple
of years. Tom Sherman hung in there as long as he could, but the group was
finally destroyed by a criminal vandal troll by the name of Ed Gin (Johnny
NoCom) two winters ago and it has never recovered. The group is now more and
more a chat room mainly thanks to me. However, my chat, unlike most other
chat, does not consist of pleasantries. Far from it, my chat will make you
sit up and take notice.
But surely that was not the purpose of a newsgroup. But let's face it, why
would anyone go to all the trouble of posting a substantive message when it
can so easily be destroyed by a criminal vandal troll. And so we are now
stuck with nothing but a chat room, the lowest common denominator. A chat
room will also eventually self-destruct.
The bottom line is that all groups, no matter their purpose, require a
moderator. Freedom equals chaos - and that is now pretty much what we have
on all the cycling newsgroups. RBM and URC have not yet descended to this
low level, but I can see they are on their way to the bottom. AB is a group
that still has quite a few members but it is just a chat room nonetheless.
ARBR and RBS I now consider defunct groups where only a few ghosts wander
about commiserating about the sad state of things.
Sic transit gloria mundi!
Regards,
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota