___________________________________
| |
| / JimBeam me up, Scotchie! \ |
| ( There is no _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ) | <--- What is missing in
| \ down here. *sigh!* / | this newsgroup?
| / | Why does only silence
| o | survive here?
| (|\ | What do YOU think? '_/_\_________________________ _@o _'
--
Take Back Control! -- Mesh The Planet!
Do you GNUS too? -- yeti@tickle-me--but-please-only-over-nntp--club
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Mon, 26 Sep 2022, yeti wrote:

What is missing in
this newsgroup?
Why does only silence
survive here?
What do YOU think?

Well, my first suspicion had been Tilde.institute neglected mentioning available Netnews service in their documentation, but it turned out
not to be the case. [1]

However, the thing is that page seemed to be written as if
Tildeverse Netnews was _just_ Tilde.club-only facility which
happened to be open for public access; this part is *not* true. [2]
There is also absolutely no mention of `tilde.institute` newsgroup
allotted specifically for Tilde.institute users to discuss their things either.

I would not be surprised, if a random Tilde.institute user
stumbling upon this documentation page would think that
"Oh, this is Tilde.club's stuff then, I'll probably use that later
when I need to talk with people over at Tilde.club..."
and not use it; never realizing that this communication channel
actually reaches people across Tildeverse and beyond;
and much less knowing there is even an dedicated area for their use.

For second (potential) reason I could think of: I'm not sure
what the usual Tilde.chat #institute IRC channel traffic look like
(I haven't `/join`'ed there); but in #club IRC channel, back-and-forth
about things happening on Netnews is actually a semi-regular occurrence,
and that actually enticed some users --especially ones who have heard of
or used USENET before-- to try it out. [3]

While the solution on the wiki side is obvious,
I'm not too sure how exactly one could go on about this
in #institute IRC channel... maybe I should `/join` to find out.

Regards,
~xwindows
(Tilde.club's Unofficial Netnews Wrangler)


[1] https://wiki.tilde.institute/w/nntp

[2]
As people who're hanging out here long enough probably already know: Tildeverse Netnews is a small NNTP *network* peering between
Tilde servers in the Tildeverse, isolated from USENET.
There are currently 3 servers which host actual news daemon:

- news.tilde.club (public gateway, also known as news.tildeverse.org)
- cosmic.voyage (distribution point)
- tilde.team

People who are on one of these Tilde could read/post directly from/into
local news spool directory while logged in, or read/post using NNTP
via SSH tunnel. For Tildezens who are on Tildes not listed above,
including Tilde.institute --or even ones who do, but wish to read/post from their own workstation without bothering with SSH tunnel--
are welcome to participate by pointing their newsreaders
to `news.tildeverse.org` (a.k.a. `news.tilde.club`).

When connected to `news.tildeverse.org` (or `news.tilde.club`)
and instructed newreader to show the list of available newsgroups,
one would see more than two dozen newsgroups and their descriptions.
Apart from what are already being apparent in the list, there are
few more things people ought to know about:

- `tilde.*` newsgroups span through entire network
- `local.*` newsgroups are Tilde.club-specific
- `tilde.black` and `tilde.your` newsgroups are defunct

[3]
The most-recent example is:
"new member - presentation" [2022-09-24T13:53:30Z] <news:tgn24r$2e48b$1@tilde.club>
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.club/114>
--
xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Related and unrelated:

I posted that message to ~institute's ML too and looked at it via

https://lists.tildeverse.org/hyperkitty/list/institute@lists.tildeverse.org/thread/COMS33KJ4JSP4DW4DJNR2DIVBZUPUPYN/

and noticed that the ML webinterface eats a backslash but not all of
them.
--
Take Back Control! -- Mesh The Planet!
Do you GNUS too? -- yeti@tickle-me--but-please-only-over-nntp--club
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Even more loosely related...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220330113657if_/http://yeti.freeshell.org/tmp/20220124-165407__emacs__browsing_6_protocols.png

Mayhaps I should redo that EMACS quilt adding GNUS, ERC and even more
stuff EMACS can "browse".
--
Take Back Control! -- Mesh The Planet!
Do you GNUS too? -- yeti@tickle-me--but-please-only-over-nntp--club
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-09-26, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

<--- What is missing in
this newsgroup?
Why does only silence
survive here?
What do YOU think?

I've been on ~.institute for a pretty long time, and I remember
seeing the NNTP announcement (I think in IRC? I don't recall
the exact details), but at the time, I'm pretty sure this list
hadn't been made yet. I set up alpine in a pretty naive way, and
kind of just left it at that. There may have been an announcement
of this group coming online, but I certainly didn't see it, so
I never knew of its existence until I recently started coming
back, and grew frustrated that alpine didn't save read status.

So maybe the reason it's quiet is because folks don't know about
it? It also seems to me that institute is just more quiet in
general. Running w(1) will show around six users logged in at
any given time, but half of them have been idle for a month or
more. I haven't been around a lot, but I recall a few years ago,
maybe 2019 or so, that even the IRC room was pretty quiet most
of the time.

Perhaps adding something to the MotD would be a good idea?
Not sure if that's a great idea, since the MotD is already a
bit cluttered. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I guess my opinion on this list would be that it's reserved
(maybe that's too strong a term) for institute *specific*
chatter, but general chat would go in other lists. Since the
server doesn't change too much over time, and when it does,
the admins don't post here, what discussion would go here that
couldn't go somewhere else?

Well, that's all a long, rambling way to say, ``I'll post here
now that I know about it, but I probably won't *start* any
conversations.''

~rdh
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

~rdh <rdh@tilde.institute> writes:

So maybe the reason it's quiet is because folks don't know about
it? It also seems to me that institute is just more quiet in
general. Running w(1) will show around six users logged in at
any given time, but half of them have been idle for a month or
more.

I've enough papoy at home so typically I just don't need the remote
horsepower, but sometimes only use ~institute when I want to compare
possible OpenBSDisms against what I run at home unless I'm not too lazy
to spin up an OpenBSD-VM. Just Mosh-ing over to ~institute often is
just faster.

I haven't been around a lot, but I recall a few years ago,
maybe 2019 or so, that even the IRC room was pretty quiet most
of the time.

It still isn't very active.

Perhaps adding something to the MotD would be a good idea?

I don't see the motd when my connection is brought up. Maybe I should periodically look at it? I just assume that major changes, announced
downtime, upgrades, ... would be mentioned in the mailing list.

Not sure if that's a great idea, since the MotD is already a
bit cluttered. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll have a look "soon-ish"...

I guess my opinion on this list would be that it's reserved
(maybe that's too strong a term) for institute *specific*
chatter, but general chat would go in other lists. Since the
server doesn't change too much over time, and when it does,
the admins don't post here, what discussion would go here that
couldn't go somewhere else?

No idea.
--
Take Back Control! -- Mesh The Planet!
I do not play Nethack, I do play GNUS! o;-)
Solid facts do not need 1001 pictures.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> writes:

~rdh <rdh@tilde.institute> writes:

Not sure if that's a great idea, since the MotD is already a
bit cluttered. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll have a look "soon-ish"...

Oh yes. What a wall of lines! Maybe the MOTD should be some pages in a textmode browser instead. Maybe ~inst's wiki is textmode browser
friendly enough to do that job?

Yes! <https://wiki.tilde.institute/> (c|sh)ould get an interactive MOTD
and/or "The Institute Times" (news) section?

No idea now and real life is calling for me early today. Need to leave
soon. _o/"
--
Take Back Control! -- Mesh The Planet!
I do not play Nethack, I do play GNUS! o;-)
Solid facts do not need 1001 pictures.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113