Now we are slowly seeing the S/N ratio return back to it's previous values, though ever so slowly; there's been a lot of abuses of usenet (private companies starting general propigation of newgrps outside of it's servers, lax news server operators, increases in crossover postings, and most annoying, binary groups) along with new technical problems (lack of space forcing the need for fast turnaround, throttling/speed capping from the ngs) but there's also a lot of (new) people realizing Usenet isn't 'all that', and are abandonding it. The S/N will never get back to where it once was, but it's getting much easier to read through established groups than it was, say, 3 years ago.

I'll suggest a reason for this... the web has attracted away the people who want bright shiny objects, leaving the rest of us in our arcane text-discussion world. Fine with me. {grin} Just don't give Usenet a "w - w - w" address, and we'll be OK.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker