> Massive sharing of illegal binaries and consequently ISPs dropping Usenet support was the "undoing". No. It wasn't a problem to run an NNTP server with no bi

> Massive sharing of illegal binaries and consequently ISPs dropping Usenet support was the "undoing". No. It wasn't a problem to run an NNTP server with no binaries, and many ISPs did so. (Source: I ran a large NNTP server for a number of years) The undoing of USENET was people, quite simply. The deluge of stupidity and spam was what chased away the smarter people, which in turn made the whole thing less valuable. I think that is a great pity. These days it's much more difficult to find niche forums and talk to other people that are interested in the same thing that you are into. And then you have to "sign up" and deal with the catastrophically bad forum software. It's a big step back and I wonder if we'll ever be able to recover.