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Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants. However each peer -- how you connected, likely through your university -- had an authoritative p

Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants. However each peer -- how you connected, likely through your university -- had an authoritative position over participants, and was the singular authenticating partner[1]. So if you were a shitbag, so to speak, your university could do something about it, which can be as simple as removing usenet access which left one with no alternatives. And given that you only had one usenet account, any newsgroup could ban you without one being able to just pop up again. It started to fall apart when the nodes on the network included every ISP, etc. When people who have no authority over the participants, and no real punitive avenue if they broke conventions, it started to fall apart. Even if you got banned from that node, there were thousands of other nodes to jump to and continue your abuse. [1] When you went to some university, the account they provided you was your authentication on Usenet. You had that single account and it was your sole key to the network.

Majromax 7y ago
> When people who have no authority over the participants, I don't think it's exactly a matter of authority. A university wouldn't care about someone merely being a troll in Usenet; they'd have to be breaking a law or otherwise acting egregiously to attract disciplinary action. Instead, I think it's a matter of reputation. A smaller community is one where everyone is likely to be familiar with everyone else on an individual basis, and a community with a technical barrier to access imposes a transition cost on someone wanting to take their ball and go elsewhere. In my opinion, both of these things act together to change one's target audience and engagement style. In such small Usenet-style communities, a user is speaking to that community at large. In larger forums with less individual reputation and lower barriers to access, the forum instead becomes more of a performance place: people are speaking to a subset of like-minded supporters. Twitter is a great example of a very large forum with a near zero-barrier, where I can shout at an adversary while speaking to like-minded people.
luckylion 7y ago
> Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants. How so? It was universities, tech people in corporations and a few folks that just had PCs as a hobby. In short: upper middle class (because those things are expensive), educated (because it really wasn't as simple as it is today) and with time on their hands. There may been some diversity in political leanings, but on the fundamentals, education, social class etc?
- jerf 7y ago
  It depends on the time frame you're looking at. Sure, the very, very beginning was that isolated, but by the mid-to-late 1990s, almost any first-world country resident could get to it if they really wanted to. Varying degrees of how hard you have to "really" want it still, of course. But you certainly had non-trivial "alt.anything.you.can.think.of" communities for LGBT, any radical political position you can name that existed at the time, obscure anime fandoms, or anything else you can think of. The mathematical principle of "regression to the mean" ensures that you get a non-trivial diversity (by pretty much any standard) long before you get to the point that "everybody" can get on there. You do not need access by literally 100% of the possible population before you get "diversity". (After all, the internet is still not there yet either even in 2020.) (The only exception is if by "diversity" you mean "exact proportionality of representation"... but that's not the same thing. If you want to say that, go ahead. At that point I will agree with you that there wasn't exact proportionality of representation... but then, there isn't today either, nor is it even clear how one would get there, especially as you crank the requisite "exactness" up. Two decimal places? Four?)
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Yes, sure, but that's like saying that country clubs are diverse because members have different hobbies. If they really want to, anyone could join, it's just easier for some than for others. My point is that it's a diversity of opinions (maybe; they tend to be closer together on the important things, too, demographics predict politics fairly well after all) and of hobbies or interests, but not of backgrounds, i.e. where the rubber meets the road. I understand that people usually do not mean "the conservative child of lawyer A and the progressive child of investment banker B chat about their shared interests with the apolitical child of entrepreneur C", but "the child of a lawyer, the child of an office worker chat with the child of a day laborer". Again, I don't mind it not being or having been like that, I don't see any intrinsic value in diversity by itself. Calling it diverse just sounds like a misrepresentation of what it was.
- endorphone 7y ago
  This sounds remarkably elitist. And honestly if one were to analyze the trolls of the world, I'd wager "upper middle class" (or simply middle class -- it was hardly so exclusive) and "educated" would be a dominant trait. A single university is an wide spectrum of participants. Yes, there are some demographic commonalities, but there are so many significant differences. Now add universities across the spectrum and across the globe.
PaulRobinson 7y ago
Usenet was full of people like me: educated, tech-savvy and interested in a whole wide range of obsessions. The first time I "met" people who weren't involved in tech online was probably Friends Reunited (school friends) and then Facebook. Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are all far more diverse than Usenet ever was (although I only ever use Twitter these days, so that might have changed). I therefore can't accept your view that it had a dramatically diverse group of participants. It has an even less diverse group of users today, and it's worth remembering we should probably not talk about it exclusively in the past tense: it's still an active thing. On the authority thing: the OP link suggests a public shared space has to be owned collectively, and therefore the policing model that Usenet lacked (other than a few good actors at the edge of the network like you suggest), will eventually be its downfall. We see this in unmoderated spaces all over the Internet today. All public spaces are at risk of anarchy without some sort of policing, once populations reach a certain size. This is not a uniquely digital/online phenomenon. I wonder if it's possible to create a protocol where policing is built in somehow, whilst retaining the public commons features that the OP desires.
- plughs 7y ago
  > Usenet was full of people like me I recognize you from afu! I only lurked, but I inevitably think of that group when I remember how good usenet used to be.
endorphone 7y ago
"Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants" Who knew this was debatable. Every race, creed, religion, and demographic (even if skewed slightly to the higher end). Every political lean imaginable. People in sports programs, arts programs, and every other nature. The notion that this group has some natural agreement is not reality based.

Majromax 7y ago

> When people who have no authority over the participants, I don't think it's exactly a matter of authority. A university wouldn't care about someone merely being a troll in Usenet; they'd have to be breaking a law or otherwise acting egregiously to attract disciplinary action. Instead, I think it's a matter of reputation. A smaller community is one where everyone is likely to be familiar with everyone else on an individual basis, and a community with a technical barrier to access imposes a transition cost on someone wanting to take their ball and go elsewhere. In my opinion, both of these things act together to change one's target audience and engagement style. In such small Usenet-style communities, a user is speaking to that community at large. In larger forums with less individual reputation and lower barriers to access, the forum instead becomes more of a performance place: people are speaking to a subset of like-minded supporters. Twitter is a great example of a very large forum with a near zero-barrier, where I can shout at an adversary while speaking to like-minded people.

luckylion 7y ago

> Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants. How so? It was universities, tech people in corporations and a few folks that just had PCs as a hobby. In short: upper middle class (because those things are expensive), educated (because it really wasn't as simple as it is today) and with time on their hands. There may been some diversity in political leanings, but on the fundamentals, education, social class etc?

jerf 7y ago
It depends on the time frame you're looking at. Sure, the very, very beginning was that isolated, but by the mid-to-late 1990s, almost any first-world country resident could get to it if they really wanted to. Varying degrees of how hard you have to "really" want it still, of course. But you certainly had non-trivial "alt.anything.you.can.think.of" communities for LGBT, any radical political position you can name that existed at the time, obscure anime fandoms, or anything else you can think of. The mathematical principle of "regression to the mean" ensures that you get a non-trivial diversity (by pretty much any standard) long before you get to the point that "everybody" can get on there. You do not need access by literally 100% of the possible population before you get "diversity". (After all, the internet is still not there yet either even in 2020.) (The only exception is if by "diversity" you mean "exact proportionality of representation"... but that's not the same thing. If you want to say that, go ahead. At that point I will agree with you that there wasn't exact proportionality of representation... but then, there isn't today either, nor is it even clear how one would get there, especially as you crank the requisite "exactness" up. Two decimal places? Four?)
- luckylion 7y ago
  Yes, sure, but that's like saying that country clubs are diverse because members have different hobbies. If they really want to, anyone could join, it's just easier for some than for others. My point is that it's a diversity of opinions (maybe; they tend to be closer together on the important things, too, demographics predict politics fairly well after all) and of hobbies or interests, but not of backgrounds, i.e. where the rubber meets the road. I understand that people usually do not mean "the conservative child of lawyer A and the progressive child of investment banker B chat about their shared interests with the apolitical child of entrepreneur C", but "the child of a lawyer, the child of an office worker chat with the child of a day laborer". Again, I don't mind it not being or having been like that, I don't see any intrinsic value in diversity by itself. Calling it diverse just sounds like a misrepresentation of what it was.
endorphone 7y ago
This sounds remarkably elitist. And honestly if one were to analyze the trolls of the world, I'd wager "upper middle class" (or simply middle class -- it was hardly so exclusive) and "educated" would be a dominant trait. A single university is an wide spectrum of participants. Yes, there are some demographic commonalities, but there are so many significant differences. Now add universities across the spectrum and across the globe.

PaulRobinson 7y ago

Usenet was full of people like me: educated, tech-savvy and interested in a whole wide range of obsessions. The first time I "met" people who weren't involved in tech online was probably Friends Reunited (school friends) and then Facebook. Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are all far more diverse than Usenet ever was (although I only ever use Twitter these days, so that might have changed). I therefore can't accept your view that it had a dramatically diverse group of participants. It has an even less diverse group of users today, and it's worth remembering we should probably not talk about it exclusively in the past tense: it's still an active thing. On the authority thing: the OP link suggests a public shared space has to be owned collectively, and therefore the policing model that Usenet lacked (other than a few good actors at the edge of the network like you suggest), will eventually be its downfall. We see this in unmoderated spaces all over the Internet today. All public spaces are at risk of anarchy without some sort of policing, once populations reach a certain size. This is not a uniquely digital/online phenomenon. I wonder if it's possible to create a protocol where policing is built in somehow, whilst retaining the public commons features that the OP desires.

plughs 7y ago
> Usenet was full of people like me I recognize you from afu! I only lurked, but I inevitably think of that group when I remember how good usenet used to be.

endorphone 7y ago

"Usenet always had a dramatically diverse group of participants" Who knew this was debatable. Every race, creed, religion, and demographic (even if skewed slightly to the higher end). Every political lean imaginable. People in sports programs, arts programs, and every other nature. The notion that this group has some natural agreement is not reality based.