Usenet VS Livejournal...

[seawasp]

Recently, I gently barbequed someone on Usenet for, shall we say, unprofessional behavior.

James Nicoll then basically said "didn't you just have that conversation?"

I did not recall any recent such conversation.

It was later pointed out that there had been, in fact, a very similar exchange -- on James Nicoll's LJ.

To me, the two areas are highly disjoint -- so disjoint, in fact, that they don't even fill the same conceptual space. I recall many Usenet conversations, and am quite aware of having gone through many of them many times in different iterations. Similarly, there are subjects I have posted on -- or argued on -- in LiveJournal multiple times. Some of these are even the same subjects.

Yet I think of them as drastically separate, even though there is clearly some overlap (James Nicoll, obviously, as well as several others).

Anyone else? Do you think of all your online interaction as the same, or do you also have separate "thought buckets" that different types of interaction fall into?

Comments

[julesjones]

Yes, I did giggle when I saw James' comment. :-)

I do have separate buckets, but not *that* separated.

One of the things that brought this home to me was when I was contemplating how to reorganise my LJ flist. Most of the people I have friended are people I already know from somewhere else online, typically rasfc, the Rumor Mill or a couple of specific fandoms. And one of the things I use the LJ for is to have conversations with those people about stuff that would be off-topic in the venues where I know them, or that would be on-topic but probably not worth inflicting on *everyone*. Stuff like the daily word count, which probably does interest the other rascafarians, but is not necessarily appropriate to rasfc itself. So often the same people, but talking about different things.

[jerith.livejournal.com]

I tend to have different types of conversations in different places, mostly because I talk to different people there. On the other hand, there is occasional overlap which ends up in the wrong bin resulting in confusion over what I said to who.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

It is all stew, as far as I am concerned. I spend a fair amount of time searching to find things because I can't remember if I saw them on lj, usenet, or yahoogroups.

[shana.livejournal.com]

I don't consider them the same, but I don't separate them as clearly as you do. Usenet, Baen's Bar, sff.net, LiveJournal... I go for the people and discussion.

I just wish some of my favorite Usenet posters would come back...

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

Separate, mostly. I mean, the screens look totally different. I'd probably get some weird case of deja vu (lira vu?), but I might not recognize right away where I was discussing the topic before.

Well...

[seawasp]

... some, like Gharlane, can't. Alas.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

They're separate to me mostly because I made myself give up Usenet when I went back to school -- I couldn't afford the amount of time I was spending there.

Then I picked up the LJ bug, which I'm having to monitor carefully; so far I've been able to keep it within tolerable bounds, but there are warning signs that are making me cautious.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

They're all in one bucket but they have slightly different flavours.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I try to think of the various online places as separate, but I tend to be forgetful and can't remember where I discussed something, or even if I have already, so I do repeat things in the same place. Things have been one big melting pot of memories lately.

[wiredgargoyle.livejournal.com]

Most of mine are disjointed. I have a number of alternate identities depending on the forum and sometimes it's hard to remember who said what to whom!

I'm getting there...

[(Anonymous)]

I always saw it as all seperate, but the walls are falling. I initially read your stuff on r.g.f.d, then I found that you were active on r.a.sf.w, as well. Plus the references to your writing made me look up your lj, so here I am. Bloglines has really blurred the walls, since a lot of what I used to see in different places are all just bloglines feeds to me, now.

[kengr]

LJ is not Usenet is not mailing lists

And yes, I get peeved at people who think mailing lists are usenet or that websites are the same as news posts.

In fact, I generally loarthe online "forums" that can't be accessed via the news interface simply because they all make keeping track of stuff *much* harder.

[(Anonymous)]

Due to my laptop being cranky of late, I've started using Google Groups to read newsgroups (I'm using 3 different PCs to do so). This has highlighted to me that GG is noticably better than blog commenting systems (that I've encountered) for having conversations over the course of some days (due to at least bolding posts that you haven't read). GG of course sucks in comparison to news readers, even OE.
There are probably better ways of handling blog comments than passively accepting the default the sites throw at me, I should probably spend some time looking into those.

Errol

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

When I have a thought to express, I have to decide whether to put it on Usenet, or LJ, or someplace else.

Anything I put on Livejournal will be ignored forever after about twelve hours. I like that Usenet threads (may)have a somewhat longer lifetime.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Strongly seconded on the LJ vs. Usenet observation, but the coming enhancement (currently available to permanent accounts, coming soon for paid accounts) of being able to flag LJ threads to be notified when there are new followups should help that quite a bit.

As for compartmentalizing one's brain so that LJ topics are limited to LJ and Usenet topics are limited to Usenet, I do that by group/forum (and by extension, blogs or & e-mails with people from said group/forum) rather than by access method--especially since for me it's mostly the same people involved, so it'd be silly to pretend we didn't have a particular conversation. (Now if only more of my favorite rgfd'ers were on LJ, so that I don't miss them as much, now that I'm mostly gone from Usenet.)

[murstein.livejournal.com]

I have different "thought buckets," but they're based on the audience, not how I'm talking. I'll talk one way to a group of SF folk, another to neoPagans, and a third to Heathens. I'll put a political concept one way in a forum dominated by Democrats, another for Republicans.

It seems that, for every two fora I belong to, there are a few who belong to both. It's not unusual for my comments in one fora to be paraphrased in another. Naturally, that happens most often when I have the time and focus to write pithily, instead of the usual quick toss-off of an idea fully formed but only half explained.