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Can I say that quality of discourse has been degrading and general utility of the net has been suffering? the article brings back memories of archie, usenet and

Can I say that quality of discourse has been degrading and general utility of the net has been suffering? the article brings back memories of archie, usenet and local irc chat rooms. There isn't anymore a general sinkhole for various activities on the net. Technologies suffered, like usenet from spam wars... yet it is good to have a set of open protocols that would provide foundation for how people use the net, so that it is not fragmented across different levels of technologies. Web had done most of the damage, not sure how to fix that. Any comment? I would rather have usenet like hierarchical database access to articles rather than weighty web driven portal that will not very parseable and has a tendency to change over time and often disappear. If there is an underlying protocol to save and distribute semantic data across the web and we could agree on that, that I think would be awesome. I heard of open data, but I doubt that can replace RFC based protocols of yester yore. IMO. my 2d.

weland 13y ago
> I would rather have usenet like hierarchical database access to articles rather than weighty web driven portal that will not very parseable and has a tendency to change over time and often disappear. Aye, so would I. USENET was clunky and difficult to use compared to, say, reddit, but overall I think it was far more open, in a technological sense. Barring karma & co. (which grown-ups probably don't care about too much), I'd say the rate of innovation in online communication between 1993 and 2013 is a joke compared to the one between 1973 and 1993. And I honestly a combination of blame lazy programmers and greedy wannabe-businessmen for for this.
visakanv 13y ago
I see where you're coming from, and you're right, in a sense. What we have is something like 10x more good stuff, and 1000x more rubbish. Whether this should be described as degradation depends on what your idea of quality is... There are more and better gems to be found, but we've to sift through a lot more crap to get to them. I think the most I'm comfortable saying is that the nature of discourse is different, and the AVERAGE quality is lower, but if we adjust our own behavior, we can reap the benefits and suffer less of the consequences. Re: Hierarchical database, I'm totally with you. I've constantly been frustrated at how it feels like the best writing is never effectively, meaningfully aggregated.

weland 13y ago

> I would rather have usenet like hierarchical database access to articles rather than weighty web driven portal that will not very parseable and has a tendency to change over time and often disappear. Aye, so would I. USENET was clunky and difficult to use compared to, say, reddit, but overall I think it was far more open, in a technological sense. Barring karma & co. (which grown-ups probably don't care about too much), I'd say the rate of innovation in online communication between 1993 and 2013 is a joke compared to the one between 1973 and 1993. And I honestly a combination of blame lazy programmers and greedy wannabe-businessmen for for this.

visakanv 13y ago

I see where you're coming from, and you're right, in a sense. What we have is something like 10x more good stuff, and 1000x more rubbish. Whether this should be described as degradation depends on what your idea of quality is... There are more and better gems to be found, but we've to sift through a lot more crap to get to them. I think the most I'm comfortable saying is that the nature of discourse is different, and the AVERAGE quality is lower, but if we adjust our own behavior, we can reap the benefits and suffer less of the consequences. Re: Hierarchical database, I'm totally with you. I've constantly been frustrated at how it feels like the best writing is never effectively, meaningfully aggregated.