As far as I'm concerned, how many newsgroups any of us use or want to
use has nothing to do with it. What *is* important is that the more
newsgroups that are available, the more likely it is that we can find
newsgroups of interest to us.
I read something quite interesting last night after seeing this thread.
My provider seems to carry around 75,000 groups, yet there seems to be
others that have over 100k groups. But, how many of those extra groups
are actually useful?
Took the following from;
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/
shopping.html under the Group List section
"Some providers try to impress you by quoting the sheer size of their
newsgroup list (in Usenet-speak, it's called an active file). They will
tell you they are a better provider because they carry “all†60,000
newsgroups, or some such thing.
Nonsense.
For starters, there are not 60,000 newsgroups. Anyone who says they have
that many has an active file full of garbage. A lot of joke groups get
created, especially in the alt.* hierarchy, and such a system is going to
have all of them. They are also going to have old newsgroups that are
long dead, misspelled newsgroups, and an assortment of other nonsense. A
large active file gives a provider a simple number which is easily
inflated to be larger than their competition, and they can then claim
that “bigger is better†despite the fact that it isn't."
Also read this in a forum here;
http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?
f=9&t=1951&start=275#p422836
"Some providers will throw just any old trash into the active file,
carrying 100,000-150,000 groups. Some users feel that "more groups ==
better."
So, I guess what you are looking for in a provider is not how many groups
it carries, but how well maintained it's active file is. Who needs
several thousand dead, misspelled and dead groups?
