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Maybe it was off putting to the less tech savvy? In a similar way to how people react to reddit the first few times they see it. You know, something like "How d

by scoggs 8y ago

Maybe it was off putting to the less tech savvy? In a similar way to how people react to reddit the first few times they see it. You know, something like "How do I use this website? It's just tons of text. It's confusing and ugly. If I go to Google Images and search "usenet" it looks more like an FTP program than any sort of "social" website or social anything. It might be a case of people just not getting or knowing that Usenet is in fact a "social bulletin board" of sorts?

smacktoward 8y ago
I was there when Usenet died. It died because it had absolutely no protections against spam or abuse of any kind whatsoever. My favorite discussion boards were buried alive under a colossal mountain of spam and binaries. Usenet was designed in a time when the Internet was only used by a tiny number of people, all of whom depended on prestigious institutions for their access to it and thus had strong motivations to not to abuse that access (since doing so would be something like career suicide). Many core assumptions in its design rest fundamentally on this always being true, which today it very much is not.
- xte 8y ago
  That's true but only to a limited extent: if you see today's we still have active groups without spam, with highly valuable discussions... Spam is a symptom of our social degradation, and it's not a thing of usenet nor internet nor IT, it's about our society that reforms schools to form Ford-model workers at any level because they are easier to manage, that promote ignorance just to sell more stuff etc. Something that ANY communication free, user-centric, platform, usenet included, can contribute to reduce. When we are citizens we tend to be honest (on average), when we are consumers we tend to be raw and the right answer we all know that's not put "more cops" like in the prohibitionist era in the US or Victorian era in UK but empower people. We know even from today's data, there are more unwanted teenage pregnancies in US state with "chastity tendency" than in countries like French or Sweden with a strong sexual education at school, there are more violence in "strong police" (sorry I do not know how to name it in English) like Russia, USA, UK, Arab world than in "soft police" countries like Swiss.
  - scoggs 8y ago
    Agreed. I hate saying this but it seems like Usenet's downfall may have been the rise of anonymity? Or at least it played a large part in it. Of course using your true identity to participate in online social platforms isn't required for them to be good and on the other side of the coin even real live people on social media sites act terrible towards others and "ruin it for everyone", or any other type of buzzword / rationale used to describe the phenomenon.
    - gweinberg 8y ago
      I don't think we need to be able to link posts to meatspace identities, but I think we do need to have some kind of persistent identities, and there need to be some kind of cost to create new ones.
    - xte 8y ago
      IMVHO simply because of social degradation, in the past even outlaws normally behave far better in society, we (as society) simply became from adults to child, regardless of our age and that's the problem. Someone think that's being child it's easy, pleasant, so a nice selling point, also children are easy to manage so good for managers/politician etc, but there is a problem, children needs parents to live, they can't stand on their foots in the wild. On a more limited point of view usenet work well enough for any tech savvy user and commerce see no opportunity in developing it, preferring instead push less free and more profitable web tech solutions, so on one side peoples get advertisements of "new colorful, 'featureful' platforms" and on the other nntp client like desktop MUA does not improve in any way. Take as an example actual MUA for the masses like Thunderbird, they look '90-style, with all limitation of ancient clients, compare to webmail's evolution... Of course we have notmuch, mutt&forks, pine&forks, but they are not for the masses, so vast majority goes for actual pre-made webmail food...
- gweinberg 8y ago
  It shouldn't have been too hard to add some features that would do a pretty good job of filtering out spam. I'm seeing the same problem with blogs. A lot of them use to have decent comments sections but the owners have given up trying to filter out the trolls, spammers, and morons and have disabled comments. There are things that can be done other than just give up.
- hnzix 8y ago
  >It died because it had absolutely no protections against spam or abuse of any kind whatsoever. Abuse aside, there is signal vs noise. The Eternal September will overwhelm any system that cannot self-regulate its own content.

by scoggs 8y ago

smacktoward 8y ago

I was there when Usenet died. It died because it had absolutely no protections against spam or abuse of any kind whatsoever. My favorite discussion boards were buried alive under a colossal mountain of spam and binaries. Usenet was designed in a time when the Internet was only used by a tiny number of people, all of whom depended on prestigious institutions for their access to it and thus had strong motivations to not to abuse that access (since doing so would be something like career suicide). Many core assumptions in its design rest fundamentally on this always being true, which today it very much is not.

xte 8y ago
That's true but only to a limited extent: if you see today's we still have active groups without spam, with highly valuable discussions... Spam is a symptom of our social degradation, and it's not a thing of usenet nor internet nor IT, it's about our society that reforms schools to form Ford-model workers at any level because they are easier to manage, that promote ignorance just to sell more stuff etc. Something that ANY communication free, user-centric, platform, usenet included, can contribute to reduce. When we are citizens we tend to be honest (on average), when we are consumers we tend to be raw and the right answer we all know that's not put "more cops" like in the prohibitionist era in the US or Victorian era in UK but empower people. We know even from today's data, there are more unwanted teenage pregnancies in US state with "chastity tendency" than in countries like French or Sweden with a strong sexual education at school, there are more violence in "strong police" (sorry I do not know how to name it in English) like Russia, USA, UK, Arab world than in "soft police" countries like Swiss.
- scoggs 8y ago
  Agreed. I hate saying this but it seems like Usenet's downfall may have been the rise of anonymity? Or at least it played a large part in it. Of course using your true identity to participate in online social platforms isn't required for them to be good and on the other side of the coin even real live people on social media sites act terrible towards others and "ruin it for everyone", or any other type of buzzword / rationale used to describe the phenomenon.
  - gweinberg 8y ago
    I don't think we need to be able to link posts to meatspace identities, but I think we do need to have some kind of persistent identities, and there need to be some kind of cost to create new ones.
  - xte 8y ago
    IMVHO simply because of social degradation, in the past even outlaws normally behave far better in society, we (as society) simply became from adults to child, regardless of our age and that's the problem. Someone think that's being child it's easy, pleasant, so a nice selling point, also children are easy to manage so good for managers/politician etc, but there is a problem, children needs parents to live, they can't stand on their foots in the wild. On a more limited point of view usenet work well enough for any tech savvy user and commerce see no opportunity in developing it, preferring instead push less free and more profitable web tech solutions, so on one side peoples get advertisements of "new colorful, 'featureful' platforms" and on the other nntp client like desktop MUA does not improve in any way. Take as an example actual MUA for the masses like Thunderbird, they look '90-style, with all limitation of ancient clients, compare to webmail's evolution... Of course we have notmuch, mutt&forks, pine&forks, but they are not for the masses, so vast majority goes for actual pre-made webmail food...
gweinberg 8y ago
It shouldn't have been too hard to add some features that would do a pretty good job of filtering out spam. I'm seeing the same problem with blogs. A lot of them use to have decent comments sections but the owners have given up trying to filter out the trolls, spammers, and morons and have disabled comments. There are things that can be done other than just give up.
hnzix 8y ago
>It died because it had absolutely no protections against spam or abuse of any kind whatsoever. Abuse aside, there is signal vs noise. The Eternal September will overwhelm any system that cannot self-regulate its own content.