Mar 11
On Moving CDP to FaceBook
The UseNet newsgroup, comp.databases.pick, has been around since 1994 or so. A few of us were already hanging out on UseNet when it was formed.
Shortly after its formation, Deja News started recording it, and all the other text-based groups.
Google snapped them up a few years later, absorbed and indexed the archives, and pretty much took over UseNet.
Back in the early, civilized days of the net, we could use this new medium to carry on technical discussions, albeit without the benefit of additional show and tell items like pictures, links, videos, etc.
Then the bad guys found it, and its rich source of unprotected email addresses they could programmatically harvest to spam.
After scaring away a good deal of the early people (Henry, notably), the bad guys even figured out since it was unregulated, unmoderated and unprotected, they could even post their male-enhancement spams right into the group conversation stream.
Coupling the bad guys with the sociopaths who realized they could hide behind a presumed layer of anonymity, the ability to carry on a conversation pretty much dried up years ago as UseNet became a pit of scum and villainy.
Even the people who were trying to participate in meaningful dialog were not known to most of the others, given the only identifying bit of information being an often cryptic email address.
There is now a FaceBook group called "Pick Programmers", formed by Garry Johnson recently.
I am putting forward that we move future discussions to it. It solves all of the problems mentioned above, plus, allows Garry or his appointed admins the ability to remove or even ban anyone who does not play by the rules.
It also provides the participants with a picture reminder of who is saying what to whom. I, for one, find this very useful.
And while it is called a "Pick" group, that is just the umbrella term. All variants of the Pick-Nelson DNA tribe are welcome, and many of the notables of their own tribes are already there.
Jon Sisk
http://jonsisk.com
Mar 11
