Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (
More info?)
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:34:39 -0500, "Ted Zieglar"
>"If you feel people should call MS or spend hours and hours searching the
>web for answers why are you and these NGs here?"
As the names suggest, these newsgroups are here for discussion of
various aspects of the computing experience; in this particular case,
perfrmance and maintenance of Windows XP. While many posts here are
either searching for advice, or giving advice in response to such
posts, that's not the sole purpose of these newsgroups.
>Where do you think I find the information for most of the questions I answer
>in these newsgroups? On the web. If I can do it, you can too.
If you have one problem that you want an answer to, then sure; you can
do that. If you have an interest in the topic, then you may want to
read the newsgroup regularly, contributing as you go along.
But the main thing is; don't post to a newsgroup if you have no
intention of reading replies to your post in that newsgroup.
>very best answer in a newsgroup contains little more than a link to the
>information on the web. That way, the poster gets more than just an answer,
>they learn how to find the answer on their own the next time.
There's a downside to "off the page" stuff, as pointed to by links;
reduced peer review. If you search the web for answers, you have to
rate the quality of what you find - and that may require a level of
knowledge no every user has. Whereas if you get bad advice in a
newsgroup, other posters reading that advice will chip in to fix.
>The web is crammed full of fabulous information that you just can't
>get in a newsgroup.
And vice versa, perhaps. The nice thing about usenet is that it's not
dominated by the loud megaphones of high-budget media.
>...virtually everything I've learned about computers has come from the web.
Interesting; a lot of what I learned has been from newsgroups, since I
started swotting up Win95 in the beta period of 1995.
Some of the difference depends on what kind of Internet access you
have. I'm on ADSL now, so I'm as happy to Google for web sites as to
read news. But until last year, I was on flat-rate dialup, and while
I could stay online as long as liked from the ISP's point of view, our
dearly-beloved telcomm company charges local phone calls per second.
So I hated having to stay online to search or read stuff on the web; I
much preferred downloading newsgroup headers in one or two minutes,
deleting and marking these, then reconnecting for a few more minutes
to pull down the message bodies I wanted.
I could then read and reply offline, and what I got was concentrated
ASCII content rather than wads of junk banners and graphics, plus
having to stay online while reading in case I had to click a "next
page" link. I hate ZD-Net style articles that serve two paragraphs of
content per page, surrounded by ads and flash junk, and thus having to
click 7 "next page" links to read one article!
>------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet?
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram