I skim the c.l.p.* groups and answer here and there, but almost never ask something; I come here in the monastery if I have a perl-related question.

back when I started to use the internet, early 90s (gopher, ftp, telnet, ... looking down on the emerging www as a kind of poor-mans-net, much to slow to be useful :-) I liked the civil, to-the-point tone almost everyone cultivated in the newsgroups; after the beginning commercialization and "de-campus-ification" of the net I simply quit;

recently I started to read news again in the hope that the "all-new shiny and colored" hypertext-www had acted as the pied-piper luring the people who had abused the usenet away, but was utterly disappointed

Nevertheless, having to face crap everywhere in the 'net (mail, www fora/forums ?!, usenet, ...) I have to say, that the usenet ist still useful though, there is no greater concentration of information and first-class knowledge as easily available IMVHO.