3 ms·

We should go more old-school and resurrect NNTP instead: Have clients that render Markdown, and servers where users can create their own access-controlled group

by cygx 6y ago

We should go more old-school and resurrect NNTP instead: Have clients that render Markdown, and servers where users can create their own access-controlled groups. Have a group where only the owner may post: That's a feed. Have a group where only the owner may post top-level articles, but anyone may respond: That's a blog.

zzo38computer 6y ago
I had the same ideas about feeds and blogs as you have, and I agree. I have seen the idea about Markdown before, and have considered that too; it is not a bad idea. However, clients should only render Markdown if the article contains a "Content-type: text/markdown" header, and assume plain text otherwise. Clients that don't understand Markdown you can still read the article, since Markdown is meant as readable even when not rendered, so that is good, too. I even wrote a simple NNTP server software and NNTP client software. Both programs are based on SQLite. I have not considered your idea of servers where users can create their own access-controlled groups, although that doesn't seem so bad; some people may wish to run such servers, and may have some way of users controlling them. Also note, you could have multiple interfaces if wanted: HTML, RSS, email, and NNTP, with NNTP as the primary and preferred interface. (To these, Gopher can also be added for read-only access, if wanted.)
- cygx 6y ago
  I have not considered your idea of servers where users can create their own access-controlled groups [...] One of the properties of traditional Usenet I don't like is that creating groups isn't a matter of minutes, but a matter of days or weeks. If we want an NNTP-based alternative to blogs, twitter and reddit, we can't have that. Instead, a user should just get control of a namespace managed by the server he's registered with. Also note, you could have multiple interfaces if wanted: HTML, RSS, email [...] That's a very important part of the equation: The server should auto-generate HTML pages and RSS feeds for the messages to allow seemless integration into the WWW. Let the power user use their news reader, but don't deny access to the 'layperson'.
  - zzo38computer 6y ago
    Namespaces is an idea that I have considered, and I have defined a kind of namespacing called "Unusenet", which uses "un" followed by the number of components of the domain name that the namespace belongs to, a reverse domain name, and then the rest of the components. The domain name is normally the domain name of the server where the newsgroup originated; if it is then federated with other servers, they use the original domain name for that newsgroup and not their own. (For example, a newsgroup originating on "example.org" named "misc.xyzzy" will have the full name "un2.org.example.misc.xyzzy".) This is what I have on my own NNTP server. (You do not have to use the Unusenet convention, but I use it in order to avoid namespace collision.) However, I currently have no "feeds" or "blogs", but only "forums"; if I do implement a blog then I would probably implement in that way, though (and as I already mentioned, this was even my idea before you mentioned it; we just happen to have the same idea). But I run my own server rather than using those of others. Of course, not all users will want that, but that is why they can have a server where users can create their own access-controlled groups in a namespace in a few minutes easily like you mentioned.

by cygx 6y ago

zzo38computer 6y ago

I had the same ideas about feeds and blogs as you have, and I agree. I have seen the idea about Markdown before, and have considered that too; it is not a bad idea. However, clients should only render Markdown if the article contains a "Content-type: text/markdown" header, and assume plain text otherwise. Clients that don't understand Markdown you can still read the article, since Markdown is meant as readable even when not rendered, so that is good, too. I even wrote a simple NNTP server software and NNTP client software. Both programs are based on SQLite. I have not considered your idea of servers where users can create their own access-controlled groups, although that doesn't seem so bad; some people may wish to run such servers, and may have some way of users controlling them. Also note, you could have multiple interfaces if wanted: HTML, RSS, email, and NNTP, with NNTP as the primary and preferred interface. (To these, Gopher can also be added for read-only access, if wanted.)

cygx 6y ago
I have not considered your idea of servers where users can create their own access-controlled groups [...] One of the properties of traditional Usenet I don't like is that creating groups isn't a matter of minutes, but a matter of days or weeks. If we want an NNTP-based alternative to blogs, twitter and reddit, we can't have that. Instead, a user should just get control of a namespace managed by the server he's registered with. Also note, you could have multiple interfaces if wanted: HTML, RSS, email [...] That's a very important part of the equation: The server should auto-generate HTML pages and RSS feeds for the messages to allow seemless integration into the WWW. Let the power user use their news reader, but don't deny access to the 'layperson'.
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  Namespaces is an idea that I have considered, and I have defined a kind of namespacing called "Unusenet", which uses "un" followed by the number of components of the domain name that the namespace belongs to, a reverse domain name, and then the rest of the components. The domain name is normally the domain name of the server where the newsgroup originated; if it is then federated with other servers, they use the original domain name for that newsgroup and not their own. (For example, a newsgroup originating on "example.org" named "misc.xyzzy" will have the full name "un2.org.example.misc.xyzzy".) This is what I have on my own NNTP server. (You do not have to use the Unusenet convention, but I use it in order to avoid namespace collision.) However, I currently have no "feeds" or "blogs", but only "forums"; if I do implement a blog then I would probably implement in that way, though (and as I already mentioned, this was even my idea before you mentioned it; we just happen to have the same idea). But I run my own server rather than using those of others. Of course, not all users will want that, but that is why they can have a server where users can create their own access-controlled groups in a namespace in a few minutes easily like you mentioned.