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I think a major component of the difference between contributing then and contributing now is friction/skill/interest. Back then, you had to be specifically int

I think a major component of the difference between contributing then and contributing now is friction/skill/interest. Back then, you had to be specifically interested in learning how to get connected, which was a niche endeavor, while the masses were oblivious or too cool for school. Now, you can simply join almost any online community using baseline skills that an enormous fraction of Earth's population already has. Artificially constructing a similar level of friction/gatekeeping would have major downsides that might not be worth it, but it could theoretically achieve a community that behaves as that past one did, if that's the goal. Sort of a CAPTCHA to prove you're not just a human, but a leet one. As others have said, HN achieves this in a way. Perhaps non-tech communities can do a similar thing. But educational materials to slowly penetrate the barrier must exist.

ghaff 3y ago
Yeah, it's not a technical thing. It's that the unwashed didn't have access/weren't even aware. Sure, you can do the same thing today given explicit gatekeeping and moderation.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  > weren't even aware I guess that aspect can't really be replicated anymore. Back when information moved slowly (in person, telephone, print) and broadcasts only included things with mass appeal (TV/radio ads, etc.) knowledge of a small but high quality community would remain tight for a long time, growing slowly. But the cat's out of the bag now: even the most obscure thing only needs to be posted in some place with tons of eyeballs (which simply could not occur at scale back in the day), if it's good it's upvoted to the top, and immediately it's no longer obscure.
mirkules 3y ago
I love this idea, but at the same time I think it is not feasible. Back then, there were no economic or even political benefits of being able to join an online community. These days, economic and political reasons are major driving factors of either controlling or infiltrating communities, so there will always be a cat-and-mouse game between insincere actors and moderators. This would be especially true on non-technical communities, although I have seen some pop up over Signal through word of mouth. On the technical side, it’s probably a lot easier to gatekeep, but even HN has degraded significantly since its early days. Lobster.rs is the only truly technical one that has kept that spirit (to this day I am still not a member, which kind of proves its gatekeeping abilities hah). p.s. love the username!
forgetfreeman 3y ago
I remember having to resort to submitting a post to alt.tech-support.recovery using a text editor and a raw telnet session due to the "lay-an-egg" requirement for posts to be accepted there and I didn't have software that would let me fiddle with headers in a sane fashion. HN most certainly does not achieve this level of filtration.
- Icathian 3y ago
  I am very curious but my search-fu has failed me. What was the requirement? Is there a link or jargon file or something I could read? I love this kind of stuff. Thanks!
  - quesera 3y ago
    To post to a moderated group, you would add an "Approved" header to your post before submitting. The content of the header was not important, just the presence. Equally fun, your "From" address (just another header) was also under your control. So it was fairly trivial to post articles From: anyone, Approved: yes. In this way, it was pretty similar to SMTP email in the same era. Before EHLO and reverse lookups and server identification and SPF and DKIM and DMARC and spam filters and universal skepticism, email was simple to spoof. Now, the readers of USENET at the time were also pretty savvy, and there were other noneditable headers attached to your message that might betray your malfeasance. If you were posting to a newsgroup that didn't permit such activity (there were some that encouraged/required it!), you might earn an angry email sent to your news administrator, who was generally connected to the authority structure (university or employer) and had little patience for your juvenile behaviour. It worked really well. ...until it didn't! But I don't think this "problem" was a meaningful contributor to the decline of USENET.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      Interesting that the content off the Approved header didn't matter. I'm only familiar with Mailman's use of same, where the content has to be the moderator's password: incorrect is equivalent to not providing the header, and correct bypasses the moderation queue. Either way, it gets scrubbed immediately, for secrecy. Essentially, it's just to let listserv moderators send to a list without having to spend time using the queue for their own messages, or automation of any sort such as custom smtp client apps.
flir 3y ago
You can always throw a shiny web interface on top of your usenet clone. If it reached critical mass, I'm sure someone would. SMTP : Gmail :: NNTP : ??? Personally I think the (necessary) lack of binaries is why it would never grow beyond its niche.
- MagnumOpus 3y ago
  SMTP : Gmail :: NNTP : Google Groups Except whoever made Google Groups (and bought out and shut down DejaNews for it) got their promotion and lost interest and so Usenet For The Unwashed Masses got nixed like so many other Google products.
  - flir 3y ago
    I think we can do better than that. Google Groups wasn't even up to the standard of contemporary desktop newsreaders.

ghaff 3y ago

Yeah, it's not a technical thing. It's that the unwashed didn't have access/weren't even aware. Sure, you can do the same thing today given explicit gatekeeping and moderation.

hunter2_ 3y ago
> weren't even aware I guess that aspect can't really be replicated anymore. Back when information moved slowly (in person, telephone, print) and broadcasts only included things with mass appeal (TV/radio ads, etc.) knowledge of a small but high quality community would remain tight for a long time, growing slowly. But the cat's out of the bag now: even the most obscure thing only needs to be posted in some place with tons of eyeballs (which simply could not occur at scale back in the day), if it's good it's upvoted to the top, and immediately it's no longer obscure.

mirkules 3y ago

I love this idea, but at the same time I think it is not feasible. Back then, there were no economic or even political benefits of being able to join an online community. These days, economic and political reasons are major driving factors of either controlling or infiltrating communities, so there will always be a cat-and-mouse game between insincere actors and moderators. This would be especially true on non-technical communities, although I have seen some pop up over Signal through word of mouth. On the technical side, it’s probably a lot easier to gatekeep, but even HN has degraded significantly since its early days. Lobster.rs is the only truly technical one that has kept that spirit (to this day I am still not a member, which kind of proves its gatekeeping abilities hah). p.s. love the username!

forgetfreeman 3y ago

I remember having to resort to submitting a post to alt.tech-support.recovery using a text editor and a raw telnet session due to the "lay-an-egg" requirement for posts to be accepted there and I didn't have software that would let me fiddle with headers in a sane fashion. HN most certainly does not achieve this level of filtration.

Icathian 3y ago
I am very curious but my search-fu has failed me. What was the requirement? Is there a link or jargon file or something I could read? I love this kind of stuff. Thanks!
- quesera 3y ago
  To post to a moderated group, you would add an "Approved" header to your post before submitting. The content of the header was not important, just the presence. Equally fun, your "From" address (just another header) was also under your control. So it was fairly trivial to post articles From: anyone, Approved: yes. In this way, it was pretty similar to SMTP email in the same era. Before EHLO and reverse lookups and server identification and SPF and DKIM and DMARC and spam filters and universal skepticism, email was simple to spoof. Now, the readers of USENET at the time were also pretty savvy, and there were other noneditable headers attached to your message that might betray your malfeasance. If you were posting to a newsgroup that didn't permit such activity (there were some that encouraged/required it!), you might earn an angry email sent to your news administrator, who was generally connected to the authority structure (university or employer) and had little patience for your juvenile behaviour. It worked really well. ...until it didn't! But I don't think this "problem" was a meaningful contributor to the decline of USENET.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    Interesting that the content off the Approved header didn't matter. I'm only familiar with Mailman's use of same, where the content has to be the moderator's password: incorrect is equivalent to not providing the header, and correct bypasses the moderation queue. Either way, it gets scrubbed immediately, for secrecy. Essentially, it's just to let listserv moderators send to a list without having to spend time using the queue for their own messages, or automation of any sort such as custom smtp client apps.

flir 3y ago

You can always throw a shiny web interface on top of your usenet clone. If it reached critical mass, I'm sure someone would. SMTP : Gmail :: NNTP : ??? Personally I think the (necessary) lack of binaries is why it would never grow beyond its niche.

MagnumOpus 3y ago
SMTP : Gmail :: NNTP : Google Groups Except whoever made Google Groups (and bought out and shut down DejaNews for it) got their promotion and lost interest and so Usenet For The Unwashed Masses got nixed like so many other Google products.
- flir 3y ago
  I think we can do better than that. Google Groups wasn't even up to the standard of contemporary desktop newsreaders.