On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 19:00:34 +0100, JR wrote:

Peter Charles wrote:

About the only problem I see emerging is the apparent slowdown in the
accretion of new "regulars". The newsreader stats posted by Forty
seems to indicate a reduction in new/return posters and the same old,
same old dominating the charts. The seemingly endless internecine
warfare has to be turn-off for newbies. As I said previously, wayno
calls this place Darwinian and Darwin's theories include extinction.

The whole "Darwinian" business is cute but can only bear so much. Sure,
"survival of the fittest" and all that jazz. Hardly likely, though,
that a newsgroup would become "extinct" in anything like the way a
species does. People come, some stay, some go, some come back, some
stay gone. So, ROFF "mutates", it "evolves", but not in any Darwinian
sense. The size of the "core group" of regulars probably stays around
the same over time, with attrition and "recruitment" more or less equal
(who knows, maybe there's some more or less standard "inner circle" size
for Usenet--the maximum number whose personal histories, likes/dislikes,
etc., other Inner Circlers can comfortably keep in their heads).

And even if ROFF could cease to exist (or if it were to atrophy to
*only* the same 10-20 folks) and the rest of the millions of fly fishers
in the world went and did something else, just how dire would that be,
who would care?

JR

Newsgroups do go extinct. It seems that if the number of posts seem
to drop below some critical mass that will hold sufficient interest,
then it drops off to virutally nothing. I have checked out different
newsgroups over the years, associated with my various hobbies and
interests. I've gone back after a one or two year hiatus and found
zero posts.

Will the fly fishing world go on? Yes.
Will it care if ROFF is gone? No.

The loss will only be felt by us.

Peter

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