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> I believe the main reason usenet faded I believe it was due to AOL and CompuServe forums, which were most importantly, new, novel, friendly and easy. Technic
by listenallyall 3y ago
> I believe the main reason usenet faded
I believe it was due to AOL and CompuServe forums, which were most importantly, new, novel, friendly and easy. Technical people were "above" AOL and so those Usenet communities survived a few more years, but ultimately succumbed to web forums which were superior to Usenet in almost every way.
Unfortunately, web forums were mostly hollowed out due to social media, and now that people are sick and tired of that, the simplicity and "innocence" of early 2000's forums, and even 90s Usenet, seems appealing (although tinted by rose-colored nostalgic glasses).
- jghn 3y agoJust my opinion but I can't think of a single way in which I found web forums of the early 2000s to be superior to usenet.
- jtode 3y agoYah no idea what they talking about me
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y agoDiscoverability? A novice could type something into Web Crawler and get a forum back as a search result. Then they could click the link and begin reading and participating immediately. Was Usenet ever that easy?
- jtode 3y agoThere was a time when "Groups" was section of google search and they indexed the whole thing.
- edgyquant 3y agoThink this is still around (at least the groups are) but the interface is terrible. Mailing list-tier
- BearhatBeer 3y agoEven easier, no web search needed. All you needed to do was search the group list for relevant terms. All the Usenet clients supported searching the group list. Then you just tick the checkbox and the articles were downloaded. Much much easier than using a search engine, scrolling through the results which were half ads even in those days, and trying out the 12 different forums you finally found which were even active...
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago> All you needed to do was search the group list for relevant terms. All the Usenet clients supported searching the group list - Group list - Usenet client Most people had no clue what that stuff was.
- BearhatBeer 3y agoThat’s another reason why Usenet was better. There was an IQ test to see if you were above 90 just to get going with it.
- listenallyall 3y agoAnd Usenet died, to no small degree, because it was heavily populated by snobs.
- BearhatBeer 3y agoIt never died, it reach a low point of participation about a decade ago, and has slowly been gaining steam again ever since. Some portions of Usenet have always stayed active even through the tough times. As social media dies due to various reasons, people are coming back. Have been for years.
- listenallyall 3y ago> It never died interesting, given that all your references to it are in the past tense
- listenallyall 3y agoYour opinion is, of course, valid, but you do recognize that it's shared by only a small minority, right?
- jghn 3y agoSure, but they made it as a statement of fact. As opposed to myself who pointed out it was an opinion.
- edgyquant 3y agoDon’t know about superior but they were definitely an evolution of the concept and were more decentralized p