3 ms·

It seems that "failure" is a rather strong word. Usenet served its purpose at a point in time and then faded into obscurity, though it keeps chugging away in a

It seems that "failure" is a rather strong word. Usenet served its purpose at a point in time and then faded into obscurity, though it keeps chugging away in a niche, appealing to some. It's like saying that IRC failed. What forum community, social network or media platform has been permanent and outlasted everything else? It seems that on every social network, people migrate, people abandon platforms, and losing critical mass can be fatal to the platform, and then it just passes on to the next one, having served its purpose; did MySpace "fail" or did it simply cede the crown to Facebook? I remember Usenet fondly, though perhaps through rose-colored glasses. It was already full of trolls, flamewars, disruption and discord. Yet I cut my teeth there as a young sysadmin. I listened at the feet of experts, literal prominent experts in the field, who had spare time to just freely share their knowledge, because the Internet was an R&E community! I learned a lot about reputation and trust in the digital age. I gained "Internet street smarts" there. I believe that it shaped a lot of people's lives, for better or worse, and that's not a failure by any measure.

shadowgovt 3y ago
Yep. Protocol-backed stuff on the Internet "fails" the way civilizations "go into decline" in the board game Small World; they aren't removed from the board, but they no longer serve any purpose other than taking up space that the active civilizations haven't taken over yet.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Exactly, it's protocol-backed, and that's the beauty of free, open source software and standards. As long as anyone care to maintain the client and/or servers, or even if very old code still works, you have a viable service. It's not a monolith that's beholden to the whims and fortunes of a single corporation that can just shut it down. Consider the enormous outcry when a single company has to shut down an entire platform, like a popular MMO or something, and then compare that to what happens when an IRC network has a schism, like the Freenode controversy: yep there was drama, but everyone took their toys and migrated to an identical network and now we have two. I come from MUDding communities myself, and there is no shortage of old and crusty wizards who cling to their MUD servers and have kept them open, going on 30 years now! Clients come and go, Internet standards change, and social network fads happen, and we're still playing a game that doesn't bother supporting TLS, MFA, Unicode, or graphics. MUDs never failed, they simply achieved posterity and faded from sight.

shadowgovt 3y ago

Yep. Protocol-backed stuff on the Internet "fails" the way civilizations "go into decline" in the board game Small World; they aren't removed from the board, but they no longer serve any purpose other than taking up space that the active civilizations haven't taken over yet.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Exactly, it's protocol-backed, and that's the beauty of free, open source software and standards. As long as anyone care to maintain the client and/or servers, or even if very old code still works, you have a viable service. It's not a monolith that's beholden to the whims and fortunes of a single corporation that can just shut it down. Consider the enormous outcry when a single company has to shut down an entire platform, like a popular MMO or something, and then compare that to what happens when an IRC network has a schism, like the Freenode controversy: yep there was drama, but everyone took their toys and migrated to an identical network and now we have two. I come from MUDding communities myself, and there is no shortage of old and crusty wizards who cling to their MUD servers and have kept them open, going on 30 years now! Clients come and go, Internet standards change, and social network fads happen, and we're still playing a game that doesn't bother supporting TLS, MFA, Unicode, or graphics. MUDs never failed, they simply achieved posterity and faded from sight.