Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

Post by bigbillheck » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 12:44 AM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #73

joezydeco wrote: post #4

Usenet thrived in a time where most of us trusted each other, traffic was an order of magnitude lighter, trolls were few, spam was unheard of, and moderation - if any - was cheap and painless. I honestly believe those times are past us. And I say that as someone that loved Usenet back in the day. What you're asking for, for free , isn't possible.

The costs of transporting Usenet weren't zero, they were simply borne by your ISP because it was understood as a necessary part of internet access. I think that's what we're missing here. If we simply paid for this stuff as part of our regular internet bill again, we could solve a lot of the "nothing works for free" problems.

Post by jamiek88 » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #132

bitwize wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant Penny Arcade, literally 22 frickin' years ago: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/22/magic-its-what...

That must be a reply to Scott McCloud's "Reinventing Comics". It came out July 25, 2000 and this strip is from June 22, 2001 (under a year later). One part of the book was about micropayments. Edit: oh yeah, obviously it is. The character talking is Scott McCloud's character, and it's titled "I can't stop talking" and Scott's webcomic at the time was called "I can't stop thinking". In fact they must be replies to the…

Post by Icathian » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 12:55 AM UTC

forgetfreeman wrote: post #143

hunter2_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Post by hombre_fatal » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

hattmall wrote: post #107

Why not just independent forum sites like 1998-2008. I was a member of 10 or so very specific forums where I could get expert advice very quickly. That is in the rare event that my problem hadn't already been discussed in great detail with highly detailed walk throughs. Then each of those forums had a marketplace where you could buy pretty much anything relevant to that interest at great values with scams being prett…

Post by guraf » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

hattmall wrote: post #135

dragontamer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Advertiser revenue dropped like a cliff in 2008 era. Facebook advertisements were far more valuable than AdSense whatever from your smaller forums. Today, you will never have the revenues of the 90s or 00s era, and likely never again as long as Facebook and Youtube have eaten up the bulk of advertising eyeballs and dollars. 2. Moderation back then was far harder. There was far more spam to deal with those forum-si…

I can't speak to ad revenue, but I helped with managing some large ~100k member forums and the cost wasn't by any means prohibitive. Costs today would be cheaper by a couple orders of magnitude. Spam wasn't a big problem either. Basic filters, and mandatory intro posts and post count restricted forums solved most issues. Moderation was much more focused on keeping things in topic and redirecting duplicate topics.