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> I'm too young to have been a part of Usenet, but it seems to me that there's no good way to recreate the space described in the article without keeping most p

> I'm too young to have been a part of Usenet, but it seems to me that there's no good way to recreate the space described in the article without keeping most people out. Hahahah no. So the biggest problem of usenet wasn't really the throngs of the "Eternal September" people (I hate the expression, btw). It was that nearly every Usenet group had its resident troll with too much time on their hands and an extreme obsession. So you'd post about, say, plans to build a 2nd railway track between Chachówek and Radom, and you'd get some dude go at you about how useless that would be and how improving transport between Warsaw and Radom would destroy the public infrastructure of the entire country. This is not theoretical, I've stumbled on usenet archives from _a few years ago_ recently and have seen the dude still going. And it was everywhere. Operating systems? Some journalist going off about how Mac's better than Linux in Every. Single. Thread. General "whine about the world" group? Some random libertarian to tell you that actually it's you who sucks. It wasn't many people, but they were active enough to ruin everyone's day. You could mute them, but unless you muted every thread that included them (and nearly every did) you'd still be exposed to them. And, because I happened to meet a few of them personally: if you further restrict the space by means, credentials and "interest", all you're going to get is a higher concentration of these people.

pmoriarty 7y ago
"So the biggest problem of usenet ... was that nearly every Usenet group had its resident troll with too much time on their hands and an extreme obsession." This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). So trolling wasn't really a problem, because you could easily filter out the trolls. Same with spam, especially once Bayesian spam filtering was invented. No, the real challenge that Usenet faced was the World-Wide Web. People were enamoured with the new shiny, with hypertext, and with embedded pictures and styling, which Usenet did not have. Web forums were also a lot easier to use. You didn't need to download or learn to use a news client. All you needed was a web browser, which everyone already had and knew how to use. Also, web search results on your topic of interest usually pointed you to forums, not to Usenet newsgroups. If Usenet was better integrated in to the web, it might have stood a chance.
- LaGrange 7y ago
  > This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). ...that just didn't work, as I even wrote: with active trolls _most_ threads had the troll somewhere in them. They tended to dominate the groups and saturate everyone else's time. > Web forums were also a lot easier to use. You didn't need to download or learn to use a news client. All you needed was a web browser, which everyone already had and knew how to use. Oh, and frequently had better moderation. Maybe because of accumulated experience, or maybe because they were less cliquish than usenet was. > If Usenet was better integrated in to the web, it might have stood a chance. Usenet better integrated with the web is called a web forum. Some, like Discourse, are even pretty good, they're far easier to set up than a non-alt usenet group. The one thing going for Usenet is modempunk nostalgia.
- pwg 7y ago
  > This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). Agreed, but the problem was that every new user began with an otherwise empty killfile. And so they had to be quite thick-skinned to outlast the barrage long enough to build up a respectable kill file to quash the noise, spam, and trolls. Unfortunately what often happened is the new user was overwhelmed, disappeared, and never returned. > No, the real challenge that Usenet faced was the World-Wide Web. People were enamoured with the new shiny, with hypertext, and with embedded pictures and styling, which Usenet did not have. This had a very significant effect. The draw of the web, new, shiny, and fancier than plain text Usenet postings, had a huge effect in cutting off the influx of new users to replace those who disappeared.

pmoriarty 7y ago

"So the biggest problem of usenet ... was that nearly every Usenet group had its resident troll with too much time on their hands and an extreme obsession." This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). So trolling wasn't really a problem, because you could easily filter out the trolls. Same with spam, especially once Bayesian spam filtering was invented. No, the real challenge that Usenet faced was the World-Wide Web. People were enamoured with the new shiny, with hypertext, and with embedded pictures and styling, which Usenet did not have. Web forums were also a lot easier to use. You didn't need to download or learn to use a news client. All you needed was a web browser, which everyone already had and knew how to use. Also, web search results on your topic of interest usually pointed you to forums, not to Usenet newsgroups. If Usenet was better integrated in to the web, it might have stood a chance.

LaGrange 7y ago
> This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). ...that just didn't work, as I even wrote: with active trolls _most_ threads had the troll somewhere in them. They tended to dominate the groups and saturate everyone else's time. > Web forums were also a lot easier to use. You didn't need to download or learn to use a news client. All you needed was a web browser, which everyone already had and knew how to use. Oh, and frequently had better moderation. Maybe because of accumulated experience, or maybe because they were less cliquish than usenet was. > If Usenet was better integrated in to the web, it might have stood a chance. Usenet better integrated with the web is called a web forum. Some, like Discourse, are even pretty good, they're far easier to set up than a non-alt usenet group. The one thing going for Usenet is modempunk nostalgia.
pwg 7y ago
> This is what kill files were for, which every half-decent news reader of the time had (something that's still lacking in most contemporary web forums). Agreed, but the problem was that every new user began with an otherwise empty killfile. And so they had to be quite thick-skinned to outlast the barrage long enough to build up a respectable kill file to quash the noise, spam, and trolls. Unfortunately what often happened is the new user was overwhelmed, disappeared, and never returned. > No, the real challenge that Usenet faced was the World-Wide Web. People were enamoured with the new shiny, with hypertext, and with embedded pictures and styling, which Usenet did not have. This had a very significant effect. The draw of the web, new, shiny, and fancier than plain text Usenet postings, had a huge effect in cutting off the influx of new users to replace those who disappeared.