Anyone Still Bother with Rec.guns?

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Grump

Grump

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I finally joined my Dad in perusing Usenet newsgroups in 1996-97. He was a mid-level pioneer in the early CompuServe days, but I digress.

I used DejaNews at first, then Google Groups, but quit years ago for two reasons:

1. The signal-to-noise ratio was a bit off. Larger number of users and posters, for sure, but the ignorance-is-no-obstacle-to-posting-my-gushop's-rumor crowd seemed far too dominant. Scratch that first sentence--the ratio was WAY off.

2. I kept getting spammed after posting. Lurking and searching was of limited use.

Now, this board is my favorite, and I'll sometimes visit GlockTalk and AR15.com once in a blue moon despite their respective levels of dumbdownness, and the AmBackForums.com is quite knowledgeable but a bit low on traffic. But does anyone on this board bother with rec.guns any more, and if so, why.

If not, why? I'm just curious about the direction(s) the online gunnie world is going, for various segments. I KNOW that we are NOT monolithic!
 
Rec.guns is moderated, so there's a pretty high signal to noise ratio. I read it every day. I find it at least as useful as any other forum, plus all of the goofy racism, trolling, etc. is filtered out.
 
Read rec.guns for a long time, but TheFiringline.com displaced it, and then I migrated here when TFL took a hiatus. I check rec.guns only occasionally, and only via the web at this point. No longer use the old newsgroups at all. The on-line bbs systems are far more user-friendly, and I don't have time to fool with less-than-friendly interfaces at this point.
 
I remember back when rec.guns was "it", way back in '94 when I discovered USNET on my University UNIX shell account.

It was pretty good back then. Pretty much because during the pre-web era, and it's infancy, everyone who was into guns, collecting, defense, or RKBA was on rec.guns and that made the signal to noise ratio quite good. I browsed rec.guns up until about 1999/2000 because I found it easy to access through telnet from various places.

I use Google groups now and then to search up my old screen name to see what an idiot I was back then. And no, I won't tell anybody what it was. :D

As to other boards, I avoid discussing them, as I avoid discussing THR.

Each board loyalists has their opinions of others, and the others have their opinion of THR. People who are very loyal to one board often get bent out of shape as to what they feel the "tone" or moderating style is on other boards. They do have their differences, but 99% of the people and posters at all of them are "normal", often belong to one or more boards, and just there to have a good time and share info.

If you focus on the positive, I've found most of the major gun boards are worthwhile in some way or another.
 
Usenet? Dang! I'd been there since 1988, but gave up on that LONG ago. Any one here ever visited rec.radio.scanner? I quit some time in the middle of a years long flame war between two guys named Mackey and Cheek. And Cheek DIED before I quit! That Mackey fella had serious issues.

Ever visited alt.politics.guns? Lotta interesting characters there. Lotta nut cases who have NO RESPECT for the 2A or other people, for that matter.

Rec.guns was a good one, but the advent of WWW and boards like this made usenet totally obsolete IMHO. Before I discovered this one last month, my favorite was perfectunion.com. I still go there, but you guys here are pretty interesting to read... :cool:
 
Rec.guns was a good one, but the advent of WWW and boards like this made usenet totally obsolete IMHO.
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Usenet, rec.guns in particular, is going strong.

Unlike various message boards, usenet NEVER "goes down". There are NEVER "too many users". DNS NEVER loses it. The moderator of rec.guns does a phenomenal job. It's why people like C.E. Harris and Bart Bobbett participate. Pro-gun writer Clayton Cramer came out of rec.guns and talk.politics.guns.

And speaking of tpg, anti-gunners have taken some devastating hits there, from Clayton Cramer's minutely researched reports, to the exposure of the old National Firearms Association (NFA) as an anti-gun front ("How come you don't ID your Board of Directors?") People like Bill Levinson got the ball rolling on torpedoing the Million Moron March's tax exempt status. Who kicked that pathological liar Michael Bellesiles in the rhetorical crotch? Guys like Clayton Cramer in tpg. Who pointed out the PRAISE that retired jackbooted BATF thug and hack author Jim Moore lavished on the Nazi gun control laws? Those of us in tpg.
 
[Rec.guns was a good one, but the advent of WWW and boards like this made usenet totally obsolete IMHO. Before I discovered this one last month, my favorite was perfectunion.com. I still go there, but you guys here are pretty interesting to read... /QUOTE]

I'm on the Usenet EVERY day.
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I've just about totally given up on Usenet, the signal to noise ration is so bad, and my patience with that is much lower now. Alas.

The only thing I still follow is alt.obituaries.
 
Rec.guns is still a good group and I check it daily. My only complaint is that the moderator only releases messages once or twice a day, usually 10 to 12 hours apart. Makes it a bit difficult to have any type of meaningful discussion. Everything happens in slow motion. Post a message, wait several hours for it to appear, then wait until sometime the next day before any responses get posted.
 
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