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I’ve seen Gopher mentioned more frequently here on HN in the past few months. Is the Gopher community active again? Personally, I want to see Usenet come back.

I’ve seen Gopher mentioned more frequently here on HN in the past few months. Is the Gopher community active again? Personally, I want to see Usenet come back. The idea of pulling down content and reading them later offline appeals to me.

synack 6y ago
Usenet's still around, but the signal to noise ratio is low and the lack of moderation is a real problem.
canada_dry 6y ago
> Personally, I want to see Usenet come back. I agree. Though our perception of usenet from the compuserve era is probably tinted by nostalgic fondness. Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements.
- _jal 6y ago
  Usenet atrophied slowly and suffered from multiple problems, but the turning point was when AOL started offering a gateway. That's when it become obvious that a lot of what made Usenet work so well was that the population was small and very homogenous (making it easy to build a high-trust culture), and that neither of those were staying true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- squarefoot 6y ago
  "Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements." I can confirm. I'm still active there, however when USENET was created they couldn't know that when Internet entered in every house, the worst individuals would access it and very predictably abuse/exploit it. As of today I see no way it can be brought back without some serious technical modifications to keep trolls/shills/abusers away.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    That's even too pessimistic. In the pre-Canter & Siegel days[1], we saw USENET and thought it would be wonderful if it entered every house, because it would elevate the general level of discourse. How optimistic was that? With hindsight, it turns out people have more of an influence on a medium than the medium does on the people. [1] for memory: when nearly everyone on USENET was highly geeky and it was aggressively non-commercial, the former due to barriers to access and the latter due to trying to stay under the radar of the organisations which were footing the long-distance bills. (one of the best discussion media I'm on is pre-USENET, or nearly so. Unfortunately it has no ouija gateway, so it's been losing members to organic attrition: cancer, heart disease, etc., more rapidly than the epigonoi have been adopting.)
bovermyer 6y ago
Eternal September is still active. But, Gopher is growing again, and unlike Usenet, there is no (minimal..) noise, only signal.
tomjen3 6y ago
It never went away and is there for you when you want to return: https://www.eternal-september.org/ https://www.eternal-september.org/

synack 6y ago

Usenet's still around, but the signal to noise ratio is low and the lack of moderation is a real problem.

canada_dry 6y ago

> Personally, I want to see Usenet come back. I agree. Though our perception of usenet from the compuserve era is probably tinted by nostalgic fondness. Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements.

_jal 6y ago
Usenet atrophied slowly and suffered from multiple problems, but the turning point was when AOL started offering a gateway. That's when it become obvious that a lot of what made Usenet work so well was that the population was small and very homogenous (making it easy to build a high-trust culture), and that neither of those were staying true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
squarefoot 6y ago
"Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements." I can confirm. I'm still active there, however when USENET was created they couldn't know that when Internet entered in every house, the worst individuals would access it and very predictably abuse/exploit it. As of today I see no way it can be brought back without some serious technical modifications to keep trolls/shills/abusers away.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  That's even too pessimistic. In the pre-Canter & Siegel days[1], we saw USENET and thought it would be wonderful if it entered every house, because it would elevate the general level of discourse. How optimistic was that? With hindsight, it turns out people have more of an influence on a medium than the medium does on the people. [1] for memory: when nearly everyone on USENET was highly geeky and it was aggressively non-commercial, the former due to barriers to access and the latter due to trying to stay under the radar of the organisations which were footing the long-distance bills. (one of the best discussion media I'm on is pre-USENET, or nearly so. Unfortunately it has no ouija gateway, so it's been losing members to organic attrition: cancer, heart disease, etc., more rapidly than the epigonoi have been adopting.)

bovermyer 6y ago

Eternal September is still active. But, Gopher is growing again, and unlike Usenet, there is no (minimal..) noise, only signal.

tomjen3 6y ago

It never went away and is there for you when you want to return: https://www.eternal-september.org/ https://www.eternal-september.org/