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I used Usenet quite a bit in the 80s/90s, and ran a Usenet/NNTP server for a small ISP for a while. I miss a lot about it, but it wouldn't work well today. Its

I used Usenet quite a bit in the 80s/90s, and ran a Usenet/NNTP server for a small ISP for a while. I miss a lot about it, but it wouldn't work well today. Its distribution model required vast amounts of storage and bandwidth even back then, before the days of spam and Internet marketing. And it was unregulated and unmoderated, which is a laughable idea now. There are just too many bad actors to even consider it. I do think it's a useful model for private discussions, with plenty of supporting software. It wouldn't be bad for internal company use. But it doesn't have animated emojis and trophies, so no one would use it now. Google Groups used to be handy for shadowing a bunch of Usenet groups, but that's gone now. I'm not sure how much Usenet exists these days. In all seriousness, Reddit is the modern successor. I dislike a lot about Reddit; their UI/UX is a contender for the worst in the entire world; and they provide a forum for a lot of the most unpleasant people in the world (not quite 4chan bad, but pretty bad). But at the end of the day, Reddit is where most threaded public conversations moved to.

VLM 5y ago
NNTP does not equal Usenet. Some of the most interesting applications of NNTP would never connect to the legacy usenet network, which as you mention is/was a mess.
wott 5y ago
> Its distribution model required vast amounts of storage and bandwidth even back then It didn't, as long as your server didn't distribute binary newsgroups, which where the only thing requiring a substantial amount of space. Furthermore, servers had no obligation to keep a long retention history, and could limit it to a few months if they wanted so.
- ruslan 5y ago
  Besides, text messages compress very well. Yes, I vote for NNTP. In my previous life I used to run a local NNTP/Usenet/Fidonet gateway, storage was not an issue at all, but bandwidth was.
kjs3 5y ago
Its distribution model required vast amounts of storage and bandwidth even back then, before the days of spam and Internet marketing. The NNTP distribution model was you could take whatever subset of feeds you wanted and keep them however long your storage and bandwidth allowed. Back in the day, a 56Kbps link worked pretty well. A T-1 meant you could pick up the funner binaries feeds. You don't need some multi-meg JS frameworks to read that content. Now, it works fine with GigE and multi-terabyte storage. There's even an RFC for running it over TLS. Reddit is the modern replacement? Things are that bad?
tdeck 5y ago
Agreed about Reddit. Maybe it's just my specific age (almost 30), but I detest the UX of old mailing list software that shows one email per page. The only thing worse is something like IRC, where you have to hope someone is in the channel with an answer at the exact moment you ask your question, and the logs aren't very practical as a store of knowledge because they're so conversational. Despite a significant interest in retrocomputing, I've never once used Usenet and would actually have to read up on how to start. I think most people my age or younger would be in the same boat with that. The sweet spot for me would be something like Discourse or even an old-school PHPBB. Slack has a similar problem to IRC - it's ephemeral and the answers don't show up on Google.
- julianlam 5y ago
  That's the exact use case for forums and bulletin board software, actually. Being able to leave messages asynchronously, but also aggregating the responses together so they're not disparate single emails. NodeBB's a lighter and more performant alternative to Discourse.
a5aAqU 5y ago
> Google Groups used to be handy for shadowing a bunch of Usenet groups, but that's gone now. I'm not sure how much Usenet exists these days. I think Google Groups killed Usenet when they made a web interface for it. It was flooded with people who didn't understand how it worked. There was a definite turning point at that time, and I cancelled my subscription.

VLM 5y ago

NNTP does not equal Usenet. Some of the most interesting applications of NNTP would never connect to the legacy usenet network, which as you mention is/was a mess.

wott 5y ago

> Its distribution model required vast amounts of storage and bandwidth even back then It didn't, as long as your server didn't distribute binary newsgroups, which where the only thing requiring a substantial amount of space. Furthermore, servers had no obligation to keep a long retention history, and could limit it to a few months if they wanted so.

ruslan 5y ago
Besides, text messages compress very well. Yes, I vote for NNTP. In my previous life I used to run a local NNTP/Usenet/Fidonet gateway, storage was not an issue at all, but bandwidth was.

kjs3 5y ago

Its distribution model required vast amounts of storage and bandwidth even back then, before the days of spam and Internet marketing. The NNTP distribution model was you could take whatever subset of feeds you wanted and keep them however long your storage and bandwidth allowed. Back in the day, a 56Kbps link worked pretty well. A T-1 meant you could pick up the funner binaries feeds. You don't need some multi-meg JS frameworks to read that content. Now, it works fine with GigE and multi-terabyte storage. There's even an RFC for running it over TLS. Reddit is the modern replacement? Things are that bad?

tdeck 5y ago

Agreed about Reddit. Maybe it's just my specific age (almost 30), but I detest the UX of old mailing list software that shows one email per page. The only thing worse is something like IRC, where you have to hope someone is in the channel with an answer at the exact moment you ask your question, and the logs aren't very practical as a store of knowledge because they're so conversational. Despite a significant interest in retrocomputing, I've never once used Usenet and would actually have to read up on how to start. I think most people my age or younger would be in the same boat with that. The sweet spot for me would be something like Discourse or even an old-school PHPBB. Slack has a similar problem to IRC - it's ephemeral and the answers don't show up on Google.

julianlam 5y ago
That's the exact use case for forums and bulletin board software, actually. Being able to leave messages asynchronously, but also aggregating the responses together so they're not disparate single emails. NodeBB's a lighter and more performant alternative to Discourse.

a5aAqU 5y ago

> Google Groups used to be handy for shadowing a bunch of Usenet groups, but that's gone now. I'm not sure how much Usenet exists these days. I think Google Groups killed Usenet when they made a web interface for it. It was flooded with people who didn't understand how it worked. There was a definite turning point at that time, and I cancelled my subscription.