drgary wrote:Marshall:

That's a very touching newbie post. Thanks for sharing it and the pointers of useful information to be gleaned on alt.coffee.

I believe that curiosity about alt.coffee's demise doesn't have to be morbid. Someone can be interested in the history of this hobby. As you pointed out we can see in comparison the advantages of a moderated thread. Perhaps we can learn more about how disputes occur online and how to avoid them. I expect its demise was very painful for many of you, just as it would be for me if H-B were to go away. If the moderators are willing perhaps a discussion of alt.coffee's demise could proceed on another thread because that topic is an entirely separate saga from the one that started this thread.

This is getting off-topic but there are many reasons why various Usenet newsgroups died, lack of moderation being just a tiny reason. In fact, before the popularity of web forums such as these we saw newsgroups die because of moderation, case in point, rec.bicycles.off-road. Actually, a friend, Gary Williams, from its unmoderated replacement alt.mountain-bike tried to get me hooked on specialty coffee over 10 years ago and he told me about alt.coffee but his advice took a few years to sink in.

Looking at the current bicycle newsgroups it appears that rec.bicycles.tech is still very active. I think a lot depends on whether there are well-admined and -organized free forums such as H-B and CG that can replace a newsgroup. I've yet to find a replacement for rec.bicycles.tech, many of the technical bicycle forums that I've checked out fail for me in several ways.

drgary wrote:Perhaps we can learn more about how disputes occur online and how to avoid them.

Alt.coffee had "disputes" all the time, and, by and large, they were handled pretty well without moderation, even if some people were left with bad feelings for a while. The psychos who killed alt.coffee included one who made threatening phone calls and sent threatening e-mails to regulars. He begged one of the regulars here to "step outside" at the following SCAA conference. I was on call there to bring security intervention, if he actually showed up. This is not going to happen on H-B.

I should add that alt.coffee became an even closer knit community than H-B. We flew in from all over the country each year to meet and have dinner at the SCAA conferences. We were the foundation of SCAA's C-Member program. We pitched in to help a member in financial trouble. We bought baby clothes for a member's newborn. And we kept a vigil while one of our beloved members passed on from a terrible cancer. So, you may understand that I react badly if I think someone might be mining the late stages of a.c for its entertainment value.

Yep, several of the newsgroups that I subscribed to, mostly music, photo, and bicycle-related, had really tight communities.

But, damn, Usenet really brought out the sociopaths. The troll of alt.mountain-bike, Mike Vandeman, finally lashed out physically.