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Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

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Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#161

Post by rglullis »

shagie wrote: post #157
rglullis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we looking at the same data? For Lemmy, I see: TOTAL USERS: 405,020 MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS: 69,825 ACTIVE SERVERS: 1,175 TOTAL POSTS: 1,558,916 > The content on the site is memes and jokes with occasional world news. So is reddit. And you are forgetting adult content.

Adult content is the third most active Lemmy instance. https://fedidb.org/software/Lemmy I am not sure that one would claim that content creators are there rather than people copying content from various porn and making it accessible. Do the graphs on that page suggest a substantial increase in the rate of content being submitted to Lemmy instances in the past year? Memes and jokes are fine... if that's what you are…

My point is that we can not expect that the migration of people will happen in clusters of specific interests, they will instead reflect the average redditor.

> I haven't been able to find an equivalent of /r/DIY, /r/boardgames, /r/soloboardgaming, /r/books, /r/factorio

Then, let's get to it?

I created https://communick.news/c/makers, it would be great to have more people helping me bootstrap it.

For games, if there isn't a lemmy instance for that, I will gladly register a domain and set it up.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#162

Post by nkozyra »

jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

> The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995

Around this time a lot of them fell apart but niche ones (art, music, internet culture) were still alive and generally unspammy.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#163

Post by autoexec »

0xEF wrote: post #44
glimshe wrote: post #31

First the BBSs, then Usenet... I think that one good thing from these services was the relatively high barrier of entry. Today, online services are all about low friction signup, which makes a lot of sense in the highly competitive Internet of 2023. But when computers were somewhat niche and you really had to figure out how to get things working, users were a lot more committed and thus the quality of discussions was…

We are of a like mind, I see. There is a part of me that misses the level of exclusivity BBS's offered, and that part of me continues to try to find online communities that scratch that particular itch (recommendations welcome). However, there is another part of me that is glad this new Internet is so much more accessable. Don't get me wrong, I abhor the pervasive marketing, corporate fingers in everyrhing, and all t…

> There is a part of me that misses the level of exclusivity BBS's offered, and that part of me continues to try to find online communities that scratch that particular itch (recommendations welcome).

My hope was that wireless mesh networks would fill that void since you have to be physically local to the network to gain access. We could have local/community level LANs with file sharing, gaming, chat, and forums. Instead we got things like facebook groups and Nextdoor.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#164

Post by shagie »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #153
rglullis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not going to take off. It already did: https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy It will be a slow descent for reddit, but if you take the "rule" of social media that splits content creators/active participants/lurkers as 1/9/90%, and if we assume that a substantial amount of the 1% is moving away from reddit, then it stands to reason that the other 99% will end up following the creators. Yeah, network effects are sti…

69,828 Monthly Active Users is not what I would call a take off of something which will conquer the world, beat the capital and liberate the world from the evil of their control. It just this years hyped nerdspace. For example, it seems even significant smaller than this space here.

HN stats a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581

> Roughly 2.6M views a day, 300K daily uniques, 3 to 3.5M monthly uniques. It depends on how you count, of course.

It would be curious to see how this compares to 2023... but I doubt you'd see an order of magnitude change in either direction.

Some 2021 stats (not from dang though) https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#165

Post by shagie »

rglullis wrote: post #161
shagie wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adult content is the third most active Lemmy instance. https://fedidb.org/software/Lemmy I am not sure that one would claim that content creators are there rather than people copying content from various porn and making it accessible. Do the graphs on that page suggest a substantial increase in the rate of content being submitted to Lemmy instances in the past year? Memes and jokes are fine... if that's what you are…

My point is that we can not expect that the migration of people will happen in clusters of specific interests, they will instead reflect the average redditor. > I haven't been able to find an equivalent of /r/DIY, /r/boardgames, /r/soloboardgaming, /r/books, /r/factorio Then, let's get to it? I created https://communick.news/c/makers , it would be great to have more people helping me bootstrap it. For games, if there…

If the content creators of Reddit aren't posting in lemmy instances, is there a strong case for the following assertion:

> and if we assume that a substantial amount of the 1% is moving away from reddit, then it stands to reason that the other 99% will end up following the creators.

Unless it is a reddit sub, where a mod has shut it down (and the community hasn't moved to another tangent reddit sub), I'm just not seeing a reduction in engagement on Reddit by the people who post.

The field of dreams approach for creating communities on Lemmy doesn't seem to be the most effective way at creating communities - especially if you, the person creating the /c/, aren't creating original content for it (long form posts) and actively working on discoverability of the /c/ (cross posting as appropriate).

Creating or gathering a community is a lot more work than just creating a /c/.

My claim is still that the people who left Reddit because of the latest mess were (a) not content creators themselves, or (b) looking for a reason to leave.

For group (a), this resulted in some subs getting made private and the communities on reddit readjusted to tangent ones.

For group (b), while a loss was not a significant one. On a casual sub that I moderate (and thus have access to stats for), I only see the number of unique users grow since January (the official iOS client use is 3x larger than Android, and 10x larger any of the other sources). The number of monthly active unique users for a middling activity cat sub is 36,000 (compare all of Lemmy at 69,000 monthly active users). I haven't seen any indication of a reduction in the posting of the 1% of content creators on Reddit in any of the subs that I moderate, nor anecdotally, any of the subs that I visit.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#166

Post by Spooky23 »

the_af wrote: post #100
Sharlin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the two big reasons to move to Reddit were (a) single interface and login and (b) threaded conversations. Which is to say, Reddit (well, Slashdot really) reinvented the things that Usenet had had but which had been lost in the migration to traditional web-based forums.

Cool! I didn't know threaded conversations were a concept from usenet. I do wonder though, why on earth are so many communities moving to facebook and Discord, the two platforms that are decidedly worse than either usenet or phpbb. Some have come to realize facebook was a mistake, but may be committing an even worse one by moving to Discord.

Kids these days don’t have email and SMS or app messaging is pay to play.

Facebook and Discord sort of just work.

Also consider that unless you’re a professional SEO spammer, google doesn’t really discover websites anymore, and buries the results that it does yield under various other things.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#167

Post by rglullis »

shagie wrote: post #165
rglullis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that we can not expect that the migration of people will happen in clusters of specific interests, they will instead reflect the average redditor. > I haven't been able to find an equivalent of /r/DIY, /r/boardgames, /r/soloboardgaming, /r/books, /r/factorio Then, let's get to it? I created https://communick.news/c/makers , it would be great to have more people helping me bootstrap it. For games, if there…

If the content creators of Reddit aren't posting in lemmy instances, is there a strong case for the following assertion: > and if we assume that a substantial amount of the 1% is moving away from reddit, then it stands to reason that the other 99% will end up following the creators. Unless it is a reddit sub, where a mod has shut it down (and the community hasn't moved to another tangent reddit sub), I'm just not see…

> Creating or gathering a community is a lot more work than just creating a /c/.

Completely agree. The point is, who will be creating new communities on reddit after all this?

> the people who left Reddit (...) were not content creators themselves

Like I said, it is an assumption. If the content creators are not leaving (or at least looking for alternatives) then I'm really sorry for them and their audience.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#168

Post by bluGill »

andsoitis wrote: post #139
jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

> I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers simply copied the phpBB ideas because they've never seen anything better. So now we have to live with those "forums" where you can't find anything, and you have to wade through screenfuls of decoration just to see any content at…

While you can construct a wide variety of applications in html (+javascript and css), you cannot do as well as a custom application for the task. Web is a great fallback for things you don't do often, but native applications are better for things you do all the time. Which is one reason everyone wants you to install their app on your phone (though most of them are not writing good apps either)

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#169

Post by bluGill »

rglullis wrote: post #96
brettermeier wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion it would help if useful instructions how to use such services won't look like an API documentation for developers. Your idea of having people in your family/friends that help everyone else with joining such communities is nice, but it also depends on some factors: - Do you know such people in your family? - Do you have a family/friends? - Do you want to waste their time with your needs, and how many peo…

The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned. Now, it might be that the learning curve is steeper than the existing solutions, but think of all the things you had to learn while using reddit: - what is a sub? - What is the difference between posting a link, a text, an image? - How does voting affect the front-page? - What is Karma? - What is a DM? Now, think of things you'll probably have to…

As any women (or man watching this) who has tried to nurse a newborn baby can tell you, the nipple is not very intuitive. It is a lot of effort to teach a baby to use a nipple correctly. Few know how to teach this skill anymore and so a lot of mothers spend a lot of money on bottles/formula. (formula is fine for those who can't make nursing work in their life, but where it would work many use formula anyway because it is so hard to learn)

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#170

Post by xeromal »

the_af wrote: post #86
jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

> So now we have to live with those "forums" Which forums do you mean? Every community I was part of has moved to facebook groups, Reddit or Discord. PhpBB has gone the way of the dodo (regrettably, since those were the "good old days" for me, since I never used usenet).

Lots of tuner communities still use them. Here's a few I frequent a lot.

https://forum.ih8mud.com/

https://www.stromtrooper.com/

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/

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