Re: What happened to comp.sys.apple2.binaries?

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article gaw717@www710.gsfc.nasa.gov (Geraldine Wright) writes...

>In article <5q6iia$r5v$1@mentor.telis.org>, quantum@telis.org says...
>>
>>Nobody ever posted anything there anyway.
>>
>>What was it for anyway?  Posting your programs?
> 
>Apple II programs that have been encoded in ASCII are posted there. People do 
>still post there, although not as many people as used to. If you are 
>interested in these ASCII encoded programs, keep monitoring the group, 
>because it still gets some traffic (other than spammers)

    The only traffic comp.binaries.apple2 now gets is spam and off-topic
message posts, things have degraded to the point where I think moderating
the group would now be advisable. There are so few new pieces of software
being written that it would not be an annoyance if binaries appeared once
every few days (or even once per week) than to have it appear in minutes.
In fact, the majority of legitimate postings there are of old software
that has already been distributed, so there is no haste needed to make
it available. 

    Things are such a mess in the group I don't even bother to check the
group any longer, it is just cluttered to death with spam! Here is an
example, this is the listing of articles still available on my newsreader
here, taken from comp.binaries.apple2:

---begin---

Group comp.binaries.apple2             available: 6318 - 6346 unread: 29

6318 Need name of old game for Apple 2
6320 Re: Need name of old game for Apple 2
6322 Re: Need name of old game for Apple 2
6323 Re: Need name of old game for Apple 2
6332 Asian Ladies
6333 Map for "Death in the Carribbean" Apple II game
6334 Asian Ladies
6335 Need a Postscript driver for the Epson Stylus colour
6336 Mac/Apple flea market - Houston, Tx
6337 Apple Graphics Tablet: apple_graphics_tablet_backup.shk -
apple_graphics_tablet_backup.shk (0/1)
6338 Apple Graphics Tablet Software: apple_graphics_tablet.shk  -
apple_graphics
|_tablet.shk (0/1)
6339 Apple Graphics Tablet Software: apple_graphics_tablet.shk  -
apple_graphics
|_tablet.shk (1/1)
6340 I am looking for new screensaver
6341 LIFESIGN....NO WITHDRAW FEELINGS.. NO PATCHES or GUMS. CONTINUE TO SMOKE
WHILE ON THE PROGRAM..... 60 DAY MONEY BACK GUARAN
6342 Mac/Apple swap meet Houston, Tx
6343 Free Homepages @   www.i-central.com/hps
6344 SAVE UP TO 90% ON COMPUTERS AND EQUIPMENT! MUST READ!
6345 <<<The BEST Secret Password>>>
6346 Make Money

---end---

    The only binary posting I can see in that mess is the software for 
the Apple graphic tablet (incidentally, the person didn't even encode
it with Binscii. It is probably also questionable whether that can
be freely distributed, even though it is nearly two decades old).

    Unless things change or there is moderation, I'd suggest making
binary postings more visable. Include a "[x/x]" tag on each message
header and maybe even announce your posting to comp.sys.apple2 if
it's something new or important.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca