Many of you may already be familiar with Usenet forums like rec.boats.electronics and rec.boats.cruising, but I’d hazard a guess that while Usenet forums are ancient by internet standards, that many folks may not know what a great resource they can be. Luckily, Google acquired DejaNews a couple years ago, and made searching and posting to these discussion groups painless (configuring a news reader client used to be about as complicated as configuring an email account). And these groups are often the best places to ask and answer questions, and they tend to have greater reach and readership than some of the websites that host discussion boards. Recently I directed a reader with a question regarding Navman vs. Raymarine instruments to rec.boats.electronics, and he promptly got some good responses. And while I’d love for more of the readers of this website to post more questions and comments on Navagear’s articles, I really have to recommend Google Groups for finding relevant experience and discussions.
Link: Google Groups
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Aaron, I’m glad you’ve had success with newsgroups, but I confess to finding them only marginally useful compared to other bboards like Seven Seas Cruising Association at http://ssca.org/sscabb/index.php? or the Sailnet Message Boards at http://members.sailnet.com/messageboards . The Cruising World discussion application is quite poor, in my opinion, and the signal to noise ratio of the discussions is also low.
Dave