Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:20:47 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Not quite the death of Usenet, but still ...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> kfl at KeithLynch.net 01/26/08 2:48 PM >>>
>"Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu> wrote:
>> Hardly any mention in Usenet of Denvention, but a fair piece of
>> discussion on various blogs, according to Google's blog search.
>
>How do you figure that?  A Google Groups search of all mentions
>of Denvention in Usenet gets 298 hits.  A Google Blogs search of
>all mentions of Denvention on blogs gets 333 hits.  More, but
>not enormously more.  There are also 571 hits on Usenet messages
>containing both "Denver" and "Worldcon" but not "Denvention."

One would expect some discussion of the Denvention hotel rooms going =
fairly quickly since reservations opened on the 21st of Jan.  From the =
Denvention Hotel page:

Crowne Plaza and Adams Mark are completely sold out.
Courtyard and Hyatt Regency at the Colorado Convention Center are sold out =
on 8/6 (Wed), 8/7 (Thur), and 8/10 (Sun).
<http://www.denvention.org/facilities/index.php>

Using Google, and limiting the search to: denvention hotel for just Jan =
2008, one gets 70 to 73 blog hits (count depends upon if sorted by date or =
relevance).

For usenet, using the same criteria: 2 hits, and half of those are a =
posting from Langford for Ansible 246. =20

I wonder if there's some large number of people who just don't use/care =
about usenet and do all of their online socializing via blogs, and other =
web based forms?  OTOH, could mean less clutter in usenet?

>Of course Usenet is old enough that it was around during the
>*previous* Denvention.  If I only look at posts made in this century,
>I get 161.  Still a fair number, especially considering the con hasn't
>happened yet.
>
>Usenet is far from dead.  So far this month, rec.arts.sf.fandom has
>gotten 839 posts, and rec.arts.sf.written has gotten an astonishing
>11,951, nearly as many as this list has gotten in the nearly six years
>it has existed.  And there are tens of thousands of other Usenet
>newsgroups.
>
>"Denvention" (or "Denver Worldcon") has been recently mentioned
>in alt.callahans, alt.fan.heinlein, alt.sex.stories.d,
>alt.support.dissociation, comp.lang.cobol, mn.sf, rec.arts.mystery,
>rec.arts.sf.announce, rec.arts.sf.composition, rec.arts.sf.fandom,
>rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, rec.music.filk, and
>soc.sexuality.spanking.

The last one is what some folks who didn't get their nearest hotel choice =
may want to do to the Denvention comcom ...=20

mjw