I am going to take off an AFW hat and put on a[n] historical hat for a
moment.

"Tom S" > in
m...
>
> "Bill" > wrote in message
> om...
>> I'm still out here drinking wine, but AOL has dropped it's newsgroup
>> service
>
> That's really lame. ...


Be that as it may, the change is also deeply ironic. To see this, you may
need to have used newsgroups significantly, before AOL dramatically _opened_
its subscribers to newsgroup access (or at least, you need to be interested
in those days). That event was circa early-middle 1990s, I don't know the
date. It was a milestone for the newsgroups, because it marked the nominal
transition from the older user base (which typically came from technical
activities and was accustomed, for years, to running diverse software to
access newsgroups, from various computers and operating systems, especially
the UNIX(tm) class of operating systems, seminal to the development of
computer networks including what came about 1980 to be called the "ARPA
Internet" in the US) to the newer user base (which was relatively unfamiliar
with how software worked, and which operated by pointing and clicking --
with standard interfaces that came automatically with the computer or the
ISP.)

The consequence was a culture clash labeled Eternal September. The phrase
is from the old annual cycle of new newsgroup users appearing every
September via universities (which had long-standing network access). These
users would go through learning curves and ask Frequently Asked Questions.
One respected newsgroup moderator, who began his newsgroup in the 1980s and
still moderates it, and who saw the advent of the Eternal September, gave me
the following anecdote. It captures what was memorable about the AOL era at
the time, to the older users. (Note the capital letters.)

` The first AOL posting I ever saw was on comp.unix-wizards, which was a
group for Unix kernal hackers. It begin with "I CLICK ON THE CLICKER AND I
JUST GET ERROR MESSAGES" and it ended with "THE UNIX I AM USING IS AMERICA
ONLINE." '

Nowadays of course the readership has evolved and expanded, and most people
probably read newsgroups via software that came with the computer or the
service provider's interface. _Departure_ of AOL from newsgroup access is
more noticeable as inconvenient to AOL's veteran newsgroup users than as a
footnote to a milestone in net communication.

(For a bit more background, see RFC1855. Its codification into an NIC
document -- previously, a version was circulated by re-posting -- coincided
roughly with the Eternal September. Its section 1.0, Introduction,
acknowledges the culture shift.) -- Max