Text Usenet a a whole is plainly in decline (although is the relatively flat 2009 the end of the decline or just a temporary plateau like in 2006?) I don't know of a comparable graph restricted to uk.*.
I think that some UK groups are pretty dead - uk.games.roleplay gets about one genuine post a week, and about ten spam. The last time I looked uk.rec.pets.misc was ALL spam from an American lunatic selling some sort of crackpot dog training scheme. Uk.people.sf.fans is almost all cross-posted from other SF groups.
But some of the mainstream science fiction groups are very busy, e.g. rec.arts.sf.written gets hundreds of real posts every day.
I don't know if uk.pets.rec.misc is on Dr. Death's list of groups to suggest for removal, but it's quite likely. He has said that he has around 60 in the pipeline.
One genuine post per week is not unreasonable, as long as the spam is filterable (I haven't looked at that group, but others I've found quite easy to set up filter rules particularly when the spam only comes from a few sources).
Groups which are crossposted with others are very difficult to evaluate. In many cases there are a lot of users who only actually read one of the groups (for instance uk.people.sf.fans; I read that because it is small compared to rassf, and so the occasional crossposted thread is manageable).
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-02 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-02 09:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-02 10:49 am (UTC)Text Usenet a a whole is plainly in decline (although is the relatively flat 2009 the end of the decline or just a temporary plateau like in 2006?) I don't know of a comparable graph restricted to uk.*.
There are on the order of ten thousand active posters to uk.*. That'd require a pretty lively definition of “dead” IMO.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-02 11:16 am (UTC)But some of the mainstream science fiction groups are very busy, e.g. rec.arts.sf.written gets hundreds of real posts every day.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-02 01:52 pm (UTC)One genuine post per week is not unreasonable, as long as the spam is filterable (I haven't looked at that group, but others I've found quite easy to set up filter rules particularly when the spam only comes from a few sources).
Groups which are crossposted with others are very difficult to evaluate. In many cases there are a lot of users who only actually read one of the groups (for instance uk.people.sf.fans; I read that because it is small compared to rassf, and so the occasional crossposted thread is manageable).