Sonic.net

I understand why Usenet support has gone, but I sure miss it. It was one of the main reasons I liked Sonic so much. I'd still like to set up tin so I can still access the one newsgroup I still read, and would have gotten a number of helpful posts to point me in the correct direction in the old days when the sonic newsgroups were available. This forum is a black hole.

I guess I'll need to adapt to using Thunderbird or some other clumsy way to read the newsgroups or give them up altogether. Now I know how the dinosaurs felt.

Anyway, it was very good while it lasted!

Bob Alman

Bob, I don't think this forum is a black hole at all, there are already more people participating here than we ever had in the news groups.

The news server is is still running so you should be able to use tin just like you always have. I've spent a lot of time since the crash getting things stable again. So, until the next crash...

I wasn't aware of that.

Sorry for the rant!

Bob

kgc wrote:I've spent a lot of time since the crash getting things stable again. So, until the next crash...

I don't know how I can say this enough. Thank you!

Kelsey: thanks again! And know that you are not alone: I just spent several hours yesterday rebuilding news.kjsl.com. It's been a while, I think last time I did this sort of thing was in 2004 or 2005. This time doesn't involve uucp, yet....

This time around I have put the various forum boards of interest into an RSS reader and maybe that'll help me keep an eye on them.

kgc wrote:No promises, but we are discussing options for keeping news.sonic.net up and may have some more information sometime next week.

Would the money saved not buying decent forum software help to purchase drives for news.sonic.net? Perhaps there could be a "Drive for the Drive" fund raiser so Sonic can afford new drives? :)

Seriously, thank you for keeping hope alive in both the existing hardware and into the future. I do hope that both 'sonic' and 'super', or some other Usenet iteration, doesn't go dark and remains part of the Sonic family of services so that Sonic doesn't turn into a version of AT&T.

Usenet service is one of the top two reasons I've continued to stay with Sonic for nearly 11 years. If it goes, then the only thing left for me is Shell. And, since I can't subscribe to Sonic broadband services, regrettably, I'll have to discuss my options as well. :(


P.S. Does this forum allow for pseudonyms? I'd hate to log in and start getting random spam because the forum displays my Username.

Michael wrote: P.S. Does this forum allow for pseudonyms? I'd hate to log in and start getting random spam because the forum displays my Username.

Nope, but your account probably entitles you to additional email-only accounts. The "thulsa_doom" account I'm posting with right now is one I created for forum use.

thulsa_doom wrote:Nope, but your account probably entitles you to additional email-only accounts. The "thulsa_doom" account I'm posting with right now is one I created for forum use.

I guess there must be some reason that the Sonic forum doesn't work like 99.9 percent of other forums on the planet. Any idea what that reason might be?

Michael wrote:

thulsa_doom wrote:Nope, but your account probably entitles you to additional email-only accounts. The "thulsa_doom" account I'm posting with right now is one I created for forum use.

I guess there must be some reason that the Sonic forum doesn't work like 99.9 percent of other forums on the planet. Any idea what that reason might be?

This comes up often enough it probably belongs in a forum FAQ by now.

thulsa_doom wrote:My only concern about letting folks arbitrarily change their displayed usernames here would be the possibility of somebody wanting to post under a name already in-use as a Sonic.net username. Who gets to be "Dane" if not the person who owns the dane@sonic.net account? Setting up a specific-use mailbox account strikes me as a fairly reasonable work-around for people that don't want to reveal their main account ID on the forums.

We want to keep the usernames unique and consistent whenever possible, and in these case it is.

Michael wrote:

thulsa_doom wrote:Nope, but your account probably entitles you to additional email-only accounts. The "thulsa_doom" account I'm posting with right now is one I created for forum use.

I guess there must be some reason that the Sonic forum doesn't work like 99.9 percent of other forums on the planet. Any idea what that reason might be?

Because you already have an account here - there's no need to register for a new one. Single sign-on is easier than a new and separate registration and login for the forum.

If for some reason you prefer to use a different but consistent log-in for the forums, simply create a mailbox login using the Member Tools at https://members.sonic.net/email/mailboxes/ and use it as your forum login.

You are also welcome to post anonymously.