I agree with this 100%. I would only add that I think PM is better than usenet for newbies and japhs since the signal to noise ration is a lot better. Here I can find a lot of persistent info that has been reviewed (i.e. Q&A, Reviews, Tutorials, Snippets, etc).

Usenet has the same premise, but it doesn't work anymore. One person posts some info, another comes along and adds 17 changes, others come along doing the same with or without tact or clue. If you are lucky, the orignal author posts an updated copy. If you are really lucky, 3 months down the road you can actually retrieve the updated copy, with a news search enginge, without having to weed through more than 10 or 15 other posts that you wish you didn't have to read. At PM, the info and/or comments can be fixed or obliterated as needed. It's not perfect, but in the short time I've been here, I've felt no compelling need to go back and look at clpm.