From owner-btk-mca@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Thu Nov 29 07:12:21 2001 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14EE617B94 for ; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:12:21 +0000 (GMT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5FB317B97 for ; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:12:17 +0000 (GMT) Received: from niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (niobium [193.62.192.41]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DFBF17B95 for ; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:12:15 +0000 (GMT) Received: (from news@localhost) by niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.8.8) id HAA22073 for btk-mca-list@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 07:04:41 GMT X-Authentication-Warning: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk: news set sender to using -f From: pkuzmic@biokin.com (Petr Kuzmic) X-Newsgroups: bionet.metabolic-reg Subject: Re: moderator Date: 28 Nov 2001 23:04:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 50 Message-ID: <77754d4.0111282304.25214b9e@posting.google.com> References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com To: btk-mca@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sender: owner-btk-mca@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk athel@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr (Athel Cornish-Bowden) wrote in message news:... > On the general issue of why this group is in such poor health there are a > number of not necessarily related points I think it worth making: > > 1. Nearly all the BioNet groups I look at are in much worse shape now than > they were about three years ago. Even those that are still quite lively > (e.g. the microbiology group) are less so than they were even a year ago. I > do NOT notice any similar trend in the other (non-biological) groups I > visit, e.g. on yahoo or google groups. Maybe it's just that biologists are > a bit disillusioned with news groups, finding that they are not living up > to their promise of a few years ago. I hope that is not true, but it's > certainly not just this group that has fallen on bad times. I think that something else might be happening. Rather then biology researchers being disillusioned or disappointed with Usenet groups (e.g., bionet.*), they simply might be using other -- previously unavailable -- electronic resources to do their work. I noticed over the last three years that research libraries, certainly those I have been using, dramatically increased the number of full-text online journals accessible from the laboratory, office, or home. Also, people working on large campuses now have online access to bibliographic databases such as WebOfScience (formerly "Science Citation Index"), SciFinder Scholar (formerly "STN Express / Chemical Abstracts Service [CAS] Online"), and others. These relatively new developments to some extent reduce the need to go to Usenet when asking questions such as "what's a good review paper on X", or "what buffer is used for experiment Y", or "how long do you incubate Z". --- Perhaps the original informal and collaborative character of the entire Usenet network (including, formerly, the bionet.* family of Usenet groups) is very much alive in areas where developments are somewhat faster than in biochemistry, or where there is no formal literature to speak of. (Just take a look at one of the groups I have been reading for a few years, news://comp.lang.c++. There's about 200 messages every day, most of them very topical. Amazingly, no spam. No moderator either.) - Petr ------------------------------------------------------- P e t r K u z m i c, Ph. D. * BioKin Ltd. 1652 S. Grand Ave. * Suite 337 * Pullman, WA 99163 509.334.4131 * 509.332.3493 fax * http://www.biokin.com .