4 ms·
You think it's worth getting into Usenet for new people?
by Uptrenda 3y ago
You think it's worth getting into Usenet for new people?
- idiotsecant 3y agoIts worth it in the same way that HAM radio is / is not worth it. You do it as a sort of lifestyle choice.
- j4nek 3y agocan you explain this a bit deeper?
- immibis 3y agoFacebook and Reddit are better ways to talk to people, but you're already here on Hacker News so it's apparent they don't suit your tastes. If you're concerned about Internet centralization, learning other systems that may be less centralized is great, but you know you won't be using it to talk to people you'd talk to on Facebook. And if you're concerned about the Internet itself, you learn ham radio.
- Kye 3y agoGopher is the next big thing.
- ggm 3y agoI literally write a briefing paper advising my university to clamp down on the nascent web and continue with gopher which was much more systematic and organized. Clearly they ignored me as they should.
- immibis 3y agoYou're not wrong - the web is very disorganized. This makes it more valuable to shareholders, as they can design sites to present us with whatever extracts optimal value at the present moment. That's how Google gets to interpose itself between us and what we're looking for, and redirect us to SEO spam pages.
- layer8 3y agoIt's worth it in order to experience a more efficient discussion UI. The difficulty is in finding newgroups where actual worthwhile discussion is going on.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoThe problem with ham radio is, that most people are not that interested in the tech itself. In the past, even if you didn't care about tech, you could still buy some radio kit and join the hobby for the "chatting" part. Now, you can get 'chat' everywhere, a lot easier and cheaper to set up, and you also gain privacy (encryption, no real-world indentifiers etc.), although I prefer the "open forum" type of ham radio communication, because well... it's meant to be open. It's same with usenet... you can get the "chat"/discusson part everywhere now (reddit,...), usually with a bit better UI and it doesn't really offer much more than that. Back in the time, it was the best (and well.. the only) thing to have.. now with alternatives, people move elsewhere, and unless you find a niche you're interested in and a community exists on usenet, you won't have much to do there.
- 15457345234 3y ago> you can get the "chat"/discusson part everywhere now (reddit,...), There's no organic discussion happening on reddit. Even the TV show subreddits are tightly moderated these days. If you try and 'discuss' in a way that invites genuine criticism and isn't just mindless cheerleading of the product on offer you'll find yourself railroaded off the site in short order, and the political/real-world/location subs are an order of magnitude more controlled.
- layer8 3y agoYou can’t get the efficient discussion UI of usenet clients anywhere, except maybe on mailing lists with a specialized mail client like Mutt. Usenets clients were peak discussion UI. Reddit is a far, far cry from it.
- immibis 3y agoCan you explain for us noobs why that is?
- lproven 3y agoProperly threaded, low-bandwidth, decent signal:noise ratio, text-only discussion? Sounds good to me. Far too little of that around.