No, moderated groups weren't that rare; they were mostly unmoderated though. For a while, social pressure kept things under control, as well as killfiles (allo

No, moderated groups weren't that rare; they were mostly unmoderated though. For a while, social pressure kept things under control, as well as killfiles (allowing users to block each other). It was the beginning of the end when a pair of asshole lawyers decided to spam every unmoderated Usenet group with ads to help people enter the US green card lottery (in April 1994). This didn't immediately kill Usenet but started the downhill slide. For a while, admins worked to cancel spam messages but in the long term this was a losing battle.