For the MTR veterans

[hbelkins]

How many of you voluntarily no longer participate in MTR?

And how many of you don't participate because you don't have Usenet access any more?

[jeffandnicole]

I think at first it was voluntary, but when I last tried, it was due to lack of Usenet.  I might've found it via Google, but declined to try to participate.

[Brandon]

I found some of the various other ways of connecting to Usenet difficult at first.  Then, I never found any other connections to Usenet later.  Once I found AARoads and the Forum, I didn't even try.

[J N Winkler]

How many of you voluntarily no longer participate in MTR?

I voluntarily left MTR.  Per the Google Groups archives, my last post (rather sour in tone, but by no means a valedictory) was on September 26, 2009.

And how many of you don't participate because you don't have Usenet access any more?

For the last year or so that I was actively reading and posting to MTR, I was doing so in Thunderbird via a free text-only Usenet news server based in Ukraine.  I presume it is still in operation, but I haven't checked and in fact don't even remember the server address.  I can't go back to my old XP laptop to check since I uninstalled Thunderbird on it when I changed from POP3 to IMAP for Gmail.  On my current (Windows 7) laptop, Thunderbird version 24.4.0 presumably still includes a mechanism for setting up a newsgroup account, but it is far from obvious how to do it since what used to be called "Newsgroup account" in older versions of Thunderbird is now something like "News & Blog Feeds."

If I wanted to go back to MTR--and, in four and a half years, I haven't really wanted to do so--it would be a matter of perhaps 15 minutes to set up a posting-capable account on Google Groups, and up to an hour to set up a newsgroup account on Thunderbird.  But there isn't really any point when I can access the MTR archives through Google Groups without taking up the burden of participation.  I did briefly consider posting to MTR back in August 2012 when I saw you had created a RIP thread for Randy Hersh.  Ralph Herman made a couple of posts describing Randy's personal circumstances in his final years, and I was strongly tempted to respond, but ultimately I didn't feel it was to anyone's benefit to augment the detail already provided.

[Pete from Boston]

Everyone has access to Usenet through Google.  Once I lost Usenet access in the early 2000s, I just switched to Google for access even though I got regular access capability later.

The spam flood and content drop pretty much killed any reason to read it or ne.transportation.  A few proud champions of the future managed to really pound the last nails in with their asinine need for attention.  I just drifted away over time.

[bandit957]

Google Groups is garbage.

[J N Winkler]

Google Groups is garbage.

So is most of the stuff posted to MTR these days--six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[oscar]

I voluntarily left MTR.  When my ISP stopped providing Usenet access, I got paid access for a time through Altopia.  But soon thereafter, not only MTR but other Usenet groups I frequented had rapidly deteriorating signal-to-noise ratios, so I canceled my Altopia account.

What sealed the deal for me was the death of a completely unrelated Usenet group, a moderated newsgroup where the posting volume plummeted, then the moderators apparently gave up on the group and stopped approving new posts or issuing weekly reminders about forum rules.

From time to time I'd use Google Groups to check in on MTR, but that only confirmed it wasn't worth the bother anymore.

[Pete from Boston]

Google Groups is garbage.

Eh, only if you are really very serious about it.  The interface is about as good or bad as any internet message board, and the Usenet content has nothing to do with them.

[txstateends]

I can't remember the last time I even visited MTR at Google Groups much less posted.  When I realized there was a much more sane and focused (ie, moderated, not *so* off-the-chain/wild-wild-west) forum over here, I haven't looked back.  Besides, you can post pix/graphics here and you could only do linkies at MTR.

By the time I quit going over there, it should have been called misc.transport.off-the-road.

[US71]

Google Groups is garbage.

What he said!

[froggie]

According to the Goog, my last MTR post was almost 3 years ago.  Left largely because this forum (which had been around 2 years by then) was much cleaner and more on-topic than MTR had become.

[kurumi]

My last MTR post (March 2010) was a hip-hop parody mocking a guy who wanted to make everything in NoCal an interstate and, in his words, "shove it down the throats of the NIMBYS".

Go here, but you'll have to scroll down: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/misc.transport.road/infnFCyNIaA/73cS50PYD7QJ

After a post like that, you really can't show your face around there again :-)

More seriously, I have the same reasons as many of us here. The off-topic, racist, trolling, spammy stuff was getting worse while the interesting stuff was drying up. AARoads was and is a much greener pasture.

[Alps]

I left MTR once this started up. The signal is drowned out by the noise over there. Krlrgrz was the death blow, but it had already been declining.

[US71]

I left MTR once this started up. The signal is drowned out by the noise over there. Krlrgrz was the death blow, but it had already been declining.

Is Calrog still there or is he Calgon?

[J N Winkler]

He's still there--I see three threads he started on the top page.

[usends]

Left largely because this forum was much cleaner and more on-topic than MTR had become.

Ditto.

[empirestate]

How many of you voluntarily no longer participate in MTR?

And how many of you don't participate because you don't have Usenet access any more?

A combination of both. My news reader suddenly stopped working on my Mac one day, and rather than figure out why, I just said "meh" and carried on not reading MTR.

[cpzilliacus]

How many of you voluntarily no longer participate in MTR?

And how many of you don't participate because you don't have Usenet access any more?

Have not posted anything for a long time. 

Can access via Google Groups. 

As mentioned upthread, there are efforts to keep discussing Viatology in m.t.r, but I never did pay much attention to those posts, and none at all now.

[Pete from Boston]

I poked around in there thanks to this thread, and sure enough, there is a committed core of folks still hurling personal attacks and nasty acrimony over differences of opinion in a roads group, for god's sake.  Some of these people were doing it ten years ago, but now there's so little to drown it out.  Such a sad exercise.

[Mdcastle]

I lost Usenet access (and space for my North Star Highways site) when my father transferred the Comcast account to me since he was no longer living at the house.