But that's because trn was a "threaded news reader" not a "USENET archive search console". It was a very good tool for its intended purpose which, as you mentio

But that's because trn was a "threaded news reader" not a "USENET archive search console". It was a very good tool for its intended purpose which, as you mention, was to consume a flow of news. Compare it to an email client or to other real-time chat fora. Also, it was a medium meant for participation, not just passive consumption. The client helped you find current topics and reply. Generally, nobody expected a newsgroup message archive to exist much less for searching of stale messages to be a normal activity. The client tools and most servers were meant to buffer just a useful fringe of traffic to allow people to follow the flow while engaging and disengaging from the groups in async bursts. We would sit at the terminal and participate for a session, then walk away. Back in the heyday of trn and USENET in general, it would be considered odd for people to hoard old messages, necropost on old threads (other than if there was some running in-joke to perpetuate in a certain group), or to be constantly online and obsessively responding with low latency throughout the whole day. Reply chains would often have multi-hour to multi-day latency, and higher volume groups were usually from more concurrent users and threads rather than more rapid messaging in a single chain.