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The problem was the excessive spam and the fact that people preferred central moderation versus doing everything client-side. The groups I used to frequent hav

by u801e 9y ago

The problem was the excessive spam and the fact that people preferred central moderation versus doing everything client-side. The groups I used to frequent have essentially been abandoned at this point (though they were active as recently as 6 or 7 years ago). Personally, I feel a lot was lost in terms of capability of online discussion by moving it to web forums that lack actual message threading and closed source platforms. Even people who prefer email lists seem to not consider NNTP as a viable solution to online discussions.

oldcynic 9y ago
Usenet was marvellous before the first ads showed up (and before Endless September of course). So were the many private news feeds that companies would set up for developer support.
- shagie 9y ago
  I (hazily) recall at sgi there was a news-bug tracker gateway. New post? New bug. Reply to post? Add a comment. This was also how sgi exported its bugs to partners. sgi.bugs.legato was a feed that legato picked up and could then use with standard software (Netscape had a built in news reader) to be able to interact with the bug tracking system.
- u801e 9y ago
  There's also a public nntp access point via gmane that one can use to browse various project mailing list archives.
pmoriarty 9y ago
NNTP clients didn't just have threading, but also lots of other advanced features (like kill files; client-side tagging, scoring, and filtering; advanced search, etc) that even now, 20 or 30 years later, web forums still lack. I also dread the day when some popular web forums finally kick the bucket. It's not at all clear that the years or decades of posts on them will still be accessible. With Usenet, everyone could easily keep their own archive of all the messages or groups they were interested in, if they cared to. Trying to do the same for web forums is much more of a pain.
- u801e 9y ago
  It may be feasible to export the comment history of HN, reddit, slashdot, and other popular forums to usenet. I don't know if that would violate some policy or TOS though.

by u801e 9y ago

oldcynic 9y ago

Usenet was marvellous before the first ads showed up (and before Endless September of course). So were the many private news feeds that companies would set up for developer support.

shagie 9y ago
I (hazily) recall at sgi there was a news-bug tracker gateway. New post? New bug. Reply to post? Add a comment. This was also how sgi exported its bugs to partners. sgi.bugs.legato was a feed that legato picked up and could then use with standard software (Netscape had a built in news reader) to be able to interact with the bug tracking system.
u801e 9y ago
There's also a public nntp access point via gmane that one can use to browse various project mailing list archives.

pmoriarty 9y ago

NNTP clients didn't just have threading, but also lots of other advanced features (like kill files; client-side tagging, scoring, and filtering; advanced search, etc) that even now, 20 or 30 years later, web forums still lack. I also dread the day when some popular web forums finally kick the bucket. It's not at all clear that the years or decades of posts on them will still be accessible. With Usenet, everyone could easily keep their own archive of all the messages or groups they were interested in, if they cared to. Trying to do the same for web forums is much more of a pain.

u801e 9y ago
It may be feasible to export the comment history of HN, reddit, slashdot, and other popular forums to usenet. I don't know if that would violate some policy or TOS though.