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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)

#201

Post by Johnythree »

flyinghamster wrote: post #141
the_af wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I wouldn't say phpBB is dead, its latest release is from February of this year. On the other hand, unless you're already a participant on such a forum, you just might have trouble finding it in today's search hellscape.

My favorite phpBB forums staggered along for many years but eventually collapsed.

The problem was the original maintainers had long sense expired, and each new phpBB release caused cascading bugs and became unmanageable. That and the increasing cost of running the servers, and the lack of backups and general maintenance.

The loss of these forums was real tragedy. So many thousands of priceless contributions from the original guru's has now been lost forever.

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

#202

Post by Johnythree »

renegade-otter wrote: post #51
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…

Good times. News Rover was part of my life back then. I should note that the BINARY usenet is still on fire, if you know what that's used for, that is. My first experience with the Internet was via WebTV, and WebTV had a gated Usenet - only the users had access to it. It was just full of red hot, vicious flame wars. In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general. Take away the barr…

> In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general.

> Take away the barrier of entry, let the masses in without any moderation, and it will turn into a cesspool.

So much this. So many brilliant forums began to die as they were flooded with arrogant and foul-mouthed 13 year olds who thought it great fun to flame everybody. Gradually each of the ancient users who had contributed so much eventually logged out, never to reappear.

That and the new breed of Moderators who actively encouraged the trolls based on "any engagement is good".

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

#203

Post by wizofaus »

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).

HN doesn't count?

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

#204

Post by Johnythree »

throw0101b wrote: post #137
taotau wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidentally, i bought myself a Synology NAS this weekend with the honest intention of using it mainly as a backup device, but while browsing the built in apps, i noticed a lot of the media download and streaming apps mentioned BT and NZB... took me a couple of seconds to realize what NZB referred to, but Im not really surprised that NZB has become an active protocol again, given how many consumer services make you…

> I ran a local NNTP relay on my home phone back in the day. Another thing that was sometimes done for BBSes was setting yourself up as a 'point node': > As the number of messages in Echomail grew over time, it became very difficult for users to keep up with the volume while logged into their local BBS. Points were introduced to address this, allowing technically-savvy users to receive the already compressed and batc…

I have many fond memories of being a Point and running the Binkly Mailer.

It's all been downhill since then

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

#205

Post by Johnythree »

janitor61 wrote: post #144
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…

One of the cool things I saw on BBSes back in the day - that I have yet to see replicated - was 'real time chat' in telechat, or being able to see what the other person is typing out as they enter it on their keyboard. It was captivating and made it really feel like an intimate conversation with another person. That could have just been the novelty of it all, as well... ICQ had a similar feature IIRC?.

Or before that, about every text conversation on Amateur Radio.

CW (Morse), RTTY (Teletype), etc, etc.

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

#206

Post by jwr »

jwells89 wrote: post #148
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…

On the topic of usability, I wonder if perhaps it's a matter of familiarity. I missed the heyday of Usenet by several years and instead landed right in the middle of the phpBB/InvisionBB/vBulletin era, but also made heavy use of RSS/Atom and was curious about other protocols, and so at one point played around with Usenet by way of the Panic client Unison[0]. It might've just been the client (though that'd be surprisi…

No, it is a matter of functionality.

Web-based forums are objectively worse. The only thing they have working for them is that you can upload/include images. Otherwise, everything is terrible, beginning with their inability to hide stuff that you've already read. You have to wade in a sea of content every time you visit every forum.

Add to this the terrible usability (for example, you only see several posts in a thread, and then you have to find the tiny tiny numbers at the bottom to go to the next "page" of posts), we've really taken a huge step back.

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

#207

Post by wizofaus »

wkat4242 wrote: post #189
mettamage wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly, Hacker News has a fairly low barrier of entry and high quality discussions. I made an account around the time when I started reading HN for the first time. I was a master student in computer science. Other than the reason to be able to create things out of my imagination, another reason why I studied computer science is because I felt too dumb to grok the field. So it was me stretching myself out of…

Maybe it's good that it has a high barrier of entry though.. If it would become too mainstream it would get lost in the currents of mainstream news. I don't want to read about the Kardashians here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Kardashian

But honestly I can't say excessive discussion of subjects I have no real interest in is the reason I avoid most online discussion forms (incl. social media). An HN thread about a Kardashian is probably still likely to be more interesting than your average FB (or Twi..., sorry "the site formerly known as an X symbol") comment thread about topics I'm genuinely invested in.

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

#208

Post by wizofaus »

fomine3 wrote: post #194
MysteryChessBox wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this place really ugly though? I've always found this trend of claiming a website is ugly if it's content dense or minimalistic to be a bit disturbing. It does sound more like preference than anything else, I don't see anything wrong with what I perceive to be a clean design.

not ugly but unfriendly for mobile.

And those with issues reading text at crazy low contrast...

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

#209

Post by wizofaus »

gadders wrote: post #171
denton-scratch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that be alt.sysadmin.recovery? Your post had to have an "Approved:" header. You could say "Approved: yes", "Approved: no" or "Approved: xyzzy" - it didn't matter. I expect there were other groups that needed an Approved: header to post.

It was the same method as that, but the group was alt.hackers I think. https://www.samiam.org/alt.hackers.html

Peak of 70 postings a month? Surely that'd be the threshold for "largely abandoned" for almost any forum these days...

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

#210

Post by self_awareness »

rcarmo wrote: post #29
self_awareness wrote: post #21

It's a waste to lose all of the software that was used to connect to usenet. Today there's a small trend to write adapters of popular boards (reddit, lobsters) to NNTP protocol, so that this old software can be re-used (so that it's possible to browse reddit through an NNTP reader).

Where are those? I'm game, would love to centralise some of those boards in a desktop client.

I don't think there is any real user-friendly app ready. But those are some prototypes/ideas:

- https://github.com/taviso/nntpit (reddit to nntp)

- https://gitlab.com/antekone/desugar (reddit/lobsters to nntp)

- https://github.com/nkizz/mop3 (mastodon to pop3)

- https://github.com/NattyNarwhal/LobstersNntp (lobste.rs to nntp)

(although reddit gateways probably stopped working after Reddit closed the doors to their API)

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