6 ms·

Usenet is distributed, and open protocol that is inherently superior to all of those "alternatives"

by syshum 5y ago

geofft 5y ago
If it is distributed and open and superior, why does anyone care that Google doesn't let you access it?
- Kye 5y ago
  Every ISP used to offer free access. It was promoted right alongside other offerings. The shrinking accessibility and visibility is part of the problem. It's easier to kill something off if the only people who use it are people who don't have a place on the mainstream internet. Look at the uproar over Freenode. No one would notice if IRC had been as obscure as NNTP over the last 15 years.
  - geofft 5y ago
    Not sure I follow the argument. You're saying that Tcl programmers don't have a place on the mainstream internet? Also, I'm not sure I understand your argument about NNTP and IRC. Why did NNTP became obscure and why did its accessibility and visibility shrink, when the same did not happen to IRC? Given that NNTP is distributed and open and superior to many things that are not obscure, accessible, and visible, how could such a thing have happened?
    - NoGravitas 5y ago
      I think partly, it's that NNTP is harder to run than IRC. You need to (at minimum) set aside a substantial amount of storage space, how much depending on whether you carry binary groups, and how long you retain articles for. The other thing is that people tended to rely on their ISPs to provide NNTP service, and they started tending to drop it in the late 90s and early 2000s, and there were few/no free alternatives at the time.
      - Kye 5y ago
        Yep. Compare to IRC which has always had an abundance of free servers and free clients that run on anything. You can telnet into an IRC server if you type fast enough. It's still the go-to support channel for major open source projects because of that accessibility.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      My guess is spam. The way I remember it, back in the late 90s and early aughts every news group became useless due to cross posting spam. Sure spam was always a thing, but I remember groups I used to read became unreadable by the sheer number of binary files being posted. IRC could avoid this problem because it is transitory. But I think the biggest reason is that usenet is unmoderated[0], while there’s always an op on an irc channel. [0] Yes, there’re some things people try to do, but they always felt bolted on, and a bit awkward. I’m not even sure how widespread they are, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen them actually work. Then again, I’m talking about a Usenet from 25 years ago.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    The problem with NNTP is a lack of incentives. ISPs have no incentives to keep the amount of data in Usenet. We need some kind of distributed system where the incentives to store and publish the data are there and are orthogonal to the interests of people reading and writing comments. It would even be a plus if it costed a tiny amount to write those comments, so as to reduce spam.
    - welterde 5y ago
      If one excludes the binary groups then the Usenet doesn't need that much storage at all.. The cost for that is negligible. However one needs to put in some work to keep it running and given it's not exactly a mainstream service, many ISPs have decided long ago to shut down their NNTP servers.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Usenet is a distributed and open protocol. Its superiority has been in question since September of 1993, when it noticeably buckled under the load of a million or so (and quite probably fewer) commercial dial-up service subscribers. Previously Usenet had a maximum user base genereally of less than 1 million. The pre-AOL Usenet probably measured less than 1 million potential users, and a small fraction of that active.[1] It dragged on for another decade, more or less, but was largely no longer freely available to dial-up / residential users by the early 2000s, largely due to its inability to police against antisocial behaviour, or mount a credible political defence against claims of rampant criminal activity (at least some of it reasonably well evidenced). As such, actually offering Usnet access became a net liability to most commercial operators. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use... ________________________________ Notes: 1. Relying on Brian Reid's "USENET Readership Summary Reports", as of April, 1988, there were 381 newsgroups, 57,979 messages, an estimated 141,000 readers, of a total user population on connected hosts of 880,000. Cited in John S. Quarterman, The Matrix, 1990.

Usenet is distributed, and open protocol that is inherently superior to all of those "alternatives"

by syshum 5y ago

Usenet is distributed, and open protocol that is inherently superior to all of those "alternatives"

geofft 5y ago

If it is distributed and open and superior, why does anyone care that Google doesn't let you access it?

Kye 5y ago
Every ISP used to offer free access. It was promoted right alongside other offerings. The shrinking accessibility and visibility is part of the problem. It's easier to kill something off if the only people who use it are people who don't have a place on the mainstream internet. Look at the uproar over Freenode. No one would notice if IRC had been as obscure as NNTP over the last 15 years.
- geofft 5y ago
  Not sure I follow the argument. You're saying that Tcl programmers don't have a place on the mainstream internet? Also, I'm not sure I understand your argument about NNTP and IRC. Why did NNTP became obscure and why did its accessibility and visibility shrink, when the same did not happen to IRC? Given that NNTP is distributed and open and superior to many things that are not obscure, accessible, and visible, how could such a thing have happened?
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    I think partly, it's that NNTP is harder to run than IRC. You need to (at minimum) set aside a substantial amount of storage space, how much depending on whether you carry binary groups, and how long you retain articles for. The other thing is that people tended to rely on their ISPs to provide NNTP service, and they started tending to drop it in the late 90s and early 2000s, and there were few/no free alternatives at the time.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Yep. Compare to IRC which has always had an abundance of free servers and free clients that run on anything. You can telnet into an IRC server if you type fast enough. It's still the go-to support channel for major open source projects because of that accessibility.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    My guess is spam. The way I remember it, back in the late 90s and early aughts every news group became useless due to cross posting spam. Sure spam was always a thing, but I remember groups I used to read became unreadable by the sheer number of binary files being posted. IRC could avoid this problem because it is transitory. But I think the biggest reason is that usenet is unmoderated[0], while there’s always an op on an irc channel. [0] Yes, there’re some things people try to do, but they always felt bolted on, and a bit awkward. I’m not even sure how widespread they are, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen them actually work. Then again, I’m talking about a Usenet from 25 years ago.
- xtracto 5y ago
  The problem with NNTP is a lack of incentives. ISPs have no incentives to keep the amount of data in Usenet. We need some kind of distributed system where the incentives to store and publish the data are there and are orthogonal to the interests of people reading and writing comments. It would even be a plus if it costed a tiny amount to write those comments, so as to reduce spam.
  - welterde 5y ago
    If one excludes the binary groups then the Usenet doesn't need that much storage at all.. The cost for that is negligible. However one needs to put in some work to keep it running and given it's not exactly a mainstream service, many ISPs have decided long ago to shut down their NNTP servers.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Usenet is a distributed and open protocol. Its superiority has been in question since September of 1993, when it noticeably buckled under the load of a million or so (and quite probably fewer) commercial dial-up service subscribers. Previously Usenet had a maximum user base genereally of less than 1 million. The pre-AOL Usenet probably measured less than 1 million potential users, and a small fraction of that active.[1] It dragged on for another decade, more or less, but was largely no longer freely available to dial-up / residential users by the early 2000s, largely due to its inability to police against antisocial behaviour, or mount a credible political defence against claims of rampant criminal activity (at least some of it reasonably well evidenced). As such, actually offering Usnet access became a net liability to most commercial operators. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use... ________________________________ Notes: 1. Relying on Brian Reid's "USENET Readership Summary Reports", as of April, 1988, there were 381 newsgroups, 57,979 messages, an estimated 141,000 readers, of a total user population on connected hosts of 880,000. Cited in John S. Quarterman, The Matrix, 1990.