Things you've always wanted to ask, but think it's not worth making a topic for

[1995hoo]

What's the point of the new red or green solid circles in signs referencing traffic lights, like "left turn yield on green" or "no turn on red"?

Few who can't read understand the word "red" is going to figure out what the rest of the sign says, so that can't be it.

Someone on this forum, I think either Takumi or cpzilliacus (more likely Takumi, I'm guessing), once referred to that style of "No Turn on Red" sign as "No Turn on Japan."

[roadman65]

I am still relatively new to this forum so I would like to ask a question about other road forums that many occasionally talk about here.

I was always wondering why some people get angry real easily at new users that seem to appear on here from time to time.  One in particular got me interested when he bragged about his thousandth post where the moderator warned him that if he did that again he would be banned from here.  I later encountered another user here who started referring to US highways as federal routes where one moderator gave him the third degree as well.  Then after meeting some of you in person at mini road meets I finally found out why all of this.

It appears that many of you belong to a forum called MTR which many of the new users on here are old users from there and can tell by MO that it is them.  So many of you just act like you would if you talked to him on MTR here.  I also learned what the term blawp means as it was some user on there that used to annoy the crap out of many here and that is why one new user was immediately banned on here.

Anyway, I was just curious to know what this MTR is and who's site it was part of or still is?  I googled MTR and it did not come up for me, but similar uses of the letters in business only.

[vdeane]

It's misc.transport.road, the Usenet group that pre-dated this forum.  The unmoderated nature of Usenet led to a long decline where more and more of the posts became trolling/spam.  Back in its heyday, it was allegedly a lot like this forum (those days were gone by the time I started reading it).

[roadman65]

So basically it was something that was good that went bad, and is no longer.

[J N Winkler]

It's misc.transport.road, the Usenet group that pre-dated this forum.  The unmoderated nature of Usenet led to a long decline where more and more of the posts became trolling/spam.  Back in its heyday, it was allegedly a lot like this forum (those days were gone by the time I started reading it).

MTR is still open and still receives message traffic:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/misc.transport.road

However, it is effectively dead compared to its heyday in the late nineties and early noughties.  It was founded in December 1995; soon after I started participating in it in 2001, longtime regulars told me that its halcyon days were already past.  In 2003 there was a proposal to create a parallel moderated newsgroup, misc.transport.road-moderated or similar, to tamp down on the flamewars.  It ultimately failed.

To answer Roadman65's other questions:

*  No-one "owned" MTR--the way Usenet works is basically that system operators agree to allocate certain amounts of space and bandwidth to hosting Usenet newsgroups (which are set up, according to a defined hierarchy, by communal agreement) and to provide facilities (such as a news server) to handle the message traffic for them.  Usenet is a very old Internet institution, dating from the 1970's, and facilities like Google Groups and its predecessor Deja News were only interfaces and message archives, not part of Usenet itself.

*  Yes, some former MTR users can be recognized by modus operandi.  Some former MTR users recycled their usernames for this forum, while others didn't.  (On MTR I was variants of "Argatlam"--at first "argatlam" and then "argatlam_roads."  My username on most forums nowadays is a fairly recognizable derivative of my real-world name since they are typically moderated and I prefer to contribute to the climate of trust rather than operate, as I did on MTR, on the assumption that my posts would speak entirely for themselves.)

[Brandon]

So basically it was something that was good that went bad, and is no longer.

Usenet.  Many of the Usenet memes (sock puppets, trolls, etc), developed in Usenet, are also used in many forums.
Usenet Newsgroups.  The various newsgroups, like misc.transport.road, that were on Usenet.  It was a part of the Big 8 hierarchy.

I'd say the heyday of MTR was the late 1990s into the very early 2000s, along with a lot of Usenet before the spammers and trolls took over.

[J N Winkler]

This Wikipedia article explains one reason for Usenet's decline:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

[ethanhopkin14]

Americans don't get frog pronunciation - hence why they ditched superfluous letters in words derived from Latin or French.

We don't?

Mackinac
Charlevoix
Cheboygan
Sault Sainte Marie
Marquette
Joliet (old Frog - now spelled Joliette)
La Salle

Need I go on?

Some are pronounced properly, and some are not, and there is no rhyme nor reason as to why.

Plus, we pronounce "garage" properly.

Down in Texas we have a bunch of Spanish names that we anglofy for our enjoyment. Although I am not sure if La Grange is French or Spanish.

[sammi]

Down in Texas we have a bunch of Spanish names that we anglicize for our enjoyment.

It's everywhere. Islamorada, FL comes to mind.

Although I am not sure if La Grange is French or Spanish.

I see it as French, so I pronounce it [luh-granzh]. (If it were Spanish it would be [la-gran-heh]?) But it's also commonly pronounced to rhyme with "range", like US 45 in Chicagoland.

[J N Winkler]

Although I am not sure if La Grange is French or Spanish.

I see it as French, so I pronounce it [luh-granzh]. (If it were Spanish it would be [la-gran-heh]?) But it's also commonly pronounced to rhyme with "range", like US 45 in Chicagoland.

Grange is the French word for barn.  The Spanish cognate is granja.

Central Texas is also very German in terms of placenames--Weimar, Schulenburg, Hattermann, etc.

[Brandon]

This Wikipedia article explains one reason for Usenet's decline:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I'd say that was the end of the beginning (or is that beginning of the end?) for Usenet.  Yet, Usenet still seemed to be decent through the late 1990s.  I did notice an increase in spam and trolls nearer the end of the decade, and MTR was one of the later ones to be affected (maybe due to the folks who were on there habitually).  Some of the newsgroups had devolved into flame wars during that time.

[ethanhopkin14]

Down in Texas we have a bunch of Spanish names that we anglicize for our enjoyment.

It's everywhere. Islamorada, FL comes to mind.

I prefer anglofy, but that's just me.

[Brandon]

Down in Texas we have a bunch of Spanish names that we anglicize for our enjoyment.

It's everywhere. Islamorada, FL comes to mind.

I prefer anglofy, but that's just me.

I think the term is "bastardize", as in "Marseille" is bastardized to "Marseilles", Illinois whereby the "s" is pronounced.

[sammi]

I prefer anglofy, but that's just me.

anglify

[ethanhopkin14]

Seeing how it is not even a word, I am not really sure how it can be misspelled. But I chose anglofy since the root word is Anglo not angli.  And especially in an internet forum (or any medium that is based solely on printed word, not spoken word with inflection), if you are going to make up a word, spell it close to the spelling of the word you are bastardizing so that most people reading it can still make out the fictional word. Just my two cents on fake word spellings.

[bassoon1986]

How do you pronounce these cities? (or at least how are they pronounced locally?)
Helena, MT
Rochester NY, vs Rochester, MN
Sault Ste. Marie
Florissant, MO
Beaufort (NC or SC)

And what are the Wisconsin Dells?

[jeffandnicole]

This Wikipedia article explains one reason for Usenet's decline:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Uh-oh...that's the month I started college!  I'm part of the problem!!!

For a few years, my college offered a class that was devoted to (or a majority of the class was devoted to) simply using the internet.  The class would be given websites to look up and how to find information.  One of those sites was even dealing with Jack Daniels, which was just awesome for the people in that class.

I'm pretty sure they don't offer such a class anymore. 

[ethanhopkin14]

I have always wondered why Arizona has each number on their mile posts as a separate sign, rather than the way the rest of the states have the mile posts as one sign. Not sure if that made sense.

[hbelkins]

I haven't read the Wiki piece on Eternal September yet, but there are a couple of things that, in my mind, poisoned MTR.

One is the many flame wars, often off-topic, that frequently broke out.

Another is the garbage posted by certain users about other users, frequently of a personal nature.

Usenet in general fell victim to other forms of discourse, and also due to providers ceasing to offer the service because of crackdown on child porn trading. Instead of merely blocking the newsgroups where the trade was going on, providers decided instead to completely abandon Usenet altogether.

Even though I had a spam trap in my email address, I always used my real name, like I do here. I"m not really a fan of anonymous usernames.

[sammi]

Helena, MT

[HEL-in-uh]

Sault Ste. Marie

[soo] Saint Marie

Beaufort (NC or SC)

NC: [boh-furt], SC: [byoo-furt]

The others I can't find anything so far.

[ethanhopkin14]

How do you pronounce these cities? (or at least how are they pronounced locally?)
Helena, MT
Rochester NY, vs Rochester, MN
Sault Ste. Marie
Florissant, MO
Beaufort (NC or SC)

And what are the Wisconsin Dells?

I just know from hanging out with a native of Florissant, MO in Florissant, MO that they do not pronounce it the French way, instead pronouncing it like the light bulb.



More like floor a sent

[Pete from Boston]

This Wikipedia article explains one reason for Usenet's decline:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Many call the death blow of Usenet the purchase of newsgroup provider DejaNews by Google, which opened the floodgates and blurred the distinction of newsgroups from its own make-your-own service Google Groups.

What really effectively killed Usenet, though, was the World Wide Web, which handed easy internet use to the masses and ended the era of a small, unintuitive internet dominated by technical and academic folks.  Year by year, more and more venues came into being that ended Usenet's role as the central hub of discussion on whatever subject.

I have also heard that legal issues stemming from the transmission of child porn on it led many ISPs to drop direct Usenet service altogether in the last decade, probably correctly assuming few of their users would notice.

[agentsteel53]

probably correctly assuming few of their users would notice.

imagine the complaint call stemming from that.

"now, sir, we've reset your modem successfully... and you can't find what!?"

[agentsteel53]

I have always wondered why Arizona has each number on their mile posts as a separate sign, rather than the way the rest of the states have the mile posts as one sign. Not sure if that made sense.

easier to modularize.  instead of having to run off "141", "142", "143", etc... they simply run off a bazillion 1's, a bazillion 2's, ... and let the field crew sort it out.

similar to how gas stations have individual digits, as opposed to "3.61 9", "3.62 9", "3.63 9"... all available as fully formed panels.

[getemngo]

I speak from a biased point of view, as I never joined MTR, but in my opinion the decline of Usenet has been a good thing for roadgeeking because it's forced us to congregate in a more "modern" place. I never wanted to join MTR because, as a teen in the early 2000s, nobody I knew used newsgroups for anything, and I worried about how the heck to set it up with my parents' email client, and it just didn't seem worth the hassle. If the AARoads forum existed in 2002, I would have gotten involved a lot earlier.

In general, roadgeeks seem a bit behind the times. We abandoned Usenet long after most other folks, we're abandoning Yahoo Groups long after most other folks, and just as forums began to decline in favor of social networking sites, we got this forum - and today it's more popular than ever before. The move to newer technology has helped younger people appreciate the hobby who wouldn't otherwise be interested.

I worry about how this community keeps getting older. Most of my Michigan roadgeek friends were born in 1979-81 and started participating in their late teens or early 20s. Here I am at 25, and now I'm the only Michigander under 31 who attends meets. rawmustard and I are the newest regulars in our state, and we've been attending events for over 5 years now. Why isn't there still a flood of new 20 year olds?

Even though I love forums and don't use much social networking besides Facebook, I hope the YouTube and Facebook roadgeek communities keep growing, because it's the only way we're going to get much fresh blood.

How do you pronounce these cities? (or at least how are they pronounced locally?)
...
Rochester NY, vs Rochester, MN

It's roughly the same no matter which state you're in (and there's a lot more than two Rochesters). Always with a short "o", as in "rod".