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harrytuttle777
Known Participant
June 10, 2011
Question

Whatever happened to the adobe newsgoup nntp forums

  • June 10, 2011
  • 3 replies
  • 2080 views

Thanks for any help / commentary you can give.

This should really be that last line

Haha.  Everytime I hit ENTER, the Javascript code on this forum takes me to the first line of the post.  This sould be on the last line, but it is on the first

These forums are a valuable place to find help, but I was wondering why adobe did away with the old Adobe newgroups.  Those newsgroups were even better.  Plain 80 column text.  None of this fancy gay HTML, stylized crap.  Sure you had a bit of spam, but that is the price of freedom.  Here, it is a pain in the but to get anything done.  The forums do not like my browser of choice (Opera), and want me to use a [edited by host] browser like Mozilla or IE.  Does anyone have any thoughts on theh matter, or would be interested in getting a Adobe NNTP newsgroup started.  I am one of those cromudgeons who don't like fancy graphics, and think that if you are using anything other than ed to edit code you are a [edited by host].

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    Claudio González
    Claudio González
    Legend
    June 10, 2011

    Harry, I took a look at messages from two years ago in the forum in Spanish. All posts by users of the NNTP version (ex-Macromedia forum) now appear simply as posted by Newsgroup_User, but they use their names to address each other in their messages. I recognize two or three who registered under almost exact names in the present forums and are still active, but if any of the others registered as well, which I doubt, they used very different screen names. So my guess is that, in spite of the dozens and dozens of messages of protest posted before the change, and the many promises to join again in their own newsgroup, that new newsgroup was never created. My guess and my doubts are based on the fact that those persons were a very active and very numerous group, while the present forum in Spanish is almost as dead as the PageMaker forum.

    I imagine the same thing happened in the forums in English.

    Noel Carboni
    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    June 10, 2011

    harrytuttle777 wrote:

    Thanks for any ... commentary you can give. 


    You want honest commentary?  Personally, I find your choices of wording and your attitude offensive.

    Forums with people helping people are the best things the Internet has to offer, competing with overwhelming things like porn and spam.  A web browser opens the sharing of information to all users.

    Though this forum software is far from perfect, if your browser isn't dealing with it any better than what you say, it's your own fault for your choice of browser or for not keeping it configured better.  Most browsers work pretty well here.

    -Noel

    H
    harrytuttle777Author
    Known Participant
    June 11, 2011

    Thanks for the commentary. My point was not to be insulting, just to point out a better way.  NNTP may [edited by host], but it is not as [edited by host] as HTML.

    <quote> Forums with people helping people are the best things the Internet has to offer, competing with overwhelming things like porn and spam.  A web browser opens the sharing of information to all users.

    </quote>


    I could not agree more.  That is what NNTP was like back in the days.  You just did not have the additional overhead of adding all the fancy graphics.  Also you did not have to log into a seperate forum everytime you wanted to post a comment (and give a company you password info).

    As for overwhelming the board with SPAM, I lay the blame on Al Gore.  He was instrumental in getting the interwebs in the hands of the common people.  My understanding is that it was under his reign that the restriction on commercial enterprise was lifted, and hence the flood of spam. Before you had cool newsgroups like alt.spleen where people could discuss spleen all day.  Al Gore came on the scene, and it has been nothing but Viagra ever since.

    Well thanks for you time.  I was just trying to guage interest in an adobe newsgoup

    -Harry

    Noel Carboni
    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    June 11, 2011

    Noel Carboni wrote:

    harrytuttle777 wrote:

    You just did not have the additional overhead of adding all the fancy graphics.


    I have a fiber optic connection to my home and a very fast computer.  Want to guess how much I care about whether graphics get loaded?  The more the merrier!

    Someone asking a question and sharing their 38 MB Photoshop file?  Takes under 20 seconds to download.  Piece of cake.

    This is the way of the future, my friend.

    Also you did not have to log into a seperate forum everytime you wanted to post a comment (and give a company you password info).

    You want to play with the big boys, go out and get yourself top quality Internet access, a modern computer, and run a mainstream web browser.  Or get left behind.

    -Noel

    That's Nice you have FOIS. But my community in Va doesn't have FOIS. Believe it or not I have a FOIS Line that runs beside the main road 50 feet from Our house. In fact it runs from NC to Richmond and beyond. But The city and County I live in are not allowed to even touch it. We have DSL (which I have), Slow Cable, and POTS.

    Last year the was 10 million dollar initiative to wire southwest/South Central Virginia with FOIS since it was the only part of the state that didn't have it.  It was Cut out of Budget by the Republican administration at the state level of Virginia.If we had a Democratic Majority. Every community in Va would have access to FOIS.

    So we have to make do with what we are allowed to have.


    We don't need to return to the golden times of yesteryear's internet, you need to update your technology to where the money is.  Clearly not everyone has the ability to do so yet, but any realist knows that no new development money is likely to be spent to cater to folks who have inadequate internet access.  The phrase "it is the way of the future" rules all in this arena.  Teenagers are walking around with phones that have better internet access than what's being described above.

    Have you sent a letter to your local communications companies asking for fiber/better Internet service?  Why not?

    And let's get real here...  Your system, with any reasonable browser, has local caching to keep you from having to wait for the download of the same graphics over and over.  The time of crying over a few hundred kbytes for still images has come and gone!  We're already well into the age of HD video, my friends.

    In short:  Get used to your web experience being more and more rich with multimedia.  It's not going to become less so.

    Oh, and if interacting with the minor quirks of this forum is the most frustrating thing you have to contend with in your online life, then it you live a charmed life indeed!

    -Noel

    Claudio González
    Claudio González
    Legend
    June 10, 2011

    Harry, you are not addressing Adobe here, just fellow users. And there are still old timers left, who strongly opposed the violent and forced imposition of this new version of the forums even during a theoretical initial trial period. Unfortunately, we did not succeed. Not only that, but we also lost many of the most valuable contributors of the old forums, either because they finally left in disgust when they saw that we were no longer heard, or because they were banned when they protested too violently. Some of us are still doing some sporadic efforts to change things for the better, or just getting bugs corrected, but our efforts are not welcome. Such efforts are getting unfortunately more sporadic, so may be Adobe will finally win this battle. At what price, only the future can tell.

    Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear.

    H
    harrytuttle777Author
    Known Participant
    June 10, 2011

    Hopefully I can type my answer without having to type "Enter"

    Claudio, thanks for the reply.  It was helpfull. I really did not expect to have adobe answer and change their minds about the current direction of the web.  I am trying to put a feeler out there and see if there are any USERS who still know what NNTP is or would be interesting in learning about it.

    I realize the way of the world is gay HTML, fancy graphics, and style over information, and I have to adapt to it.  However that doesn't mean I have to take it lying down. 

    I was really wondering if there would be any support for a newsgroup not sponsored by adobe.  Just users helping other users.

    Thanks

    Claudio González
    Claudio González
    Legend
    June 10, 2011

    Harry, my guess is that you would find great support in the ex-Macromedia products users. It was them who had a sort of NNTP newsgroup; we ex-Adobe users only had a normal site like this one, but no-nonsense, fast, and highly functional. I wouldn't know how to identify any of them nowadays, but I will give it a try in the forums in Spanish if I have the time. Unfortunately, I understand that a majority of them just left, but I remember that many of them were talking of forming their own group.

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