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USENET rises again?

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Re: USENET rises again?

#31

Post by rout39574 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
vouaobrasil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the alternatives are mostly better...except for the interface. I'm not saying that Usenet was great, but damn Reddit is such an ugly site. I actually can't bear to look at it. Hackernews is pretty nicely designed though.

Every web-based message board has a better interface than the Usenet newsreaders did, if only because web message boards have more affordances for features than newsreaders do.

I disagree. I've never yet seen a forum environment which was more usable than GNUS was for me 20-mumble years ago.

Re: USENET rises again?

#32

Post by denton-scratch »

csixty4 wrote: post #20
sargun wrote: post #8

I never really understood how usenet works. There are usenet servers, and you post to usenet via these, right? Given there are O(100s) of servers (at least), I assume that the protocol between these servers is not full mesh, and there's some kind of small set of servers that participate in a mesh, and then followers that synchronize from them. How does this synchronization protocol work? How does one join the mesh? I…

NNTP descends from UUCP, the Unix to Unix Copy Protocol. Used to be that some businesses and universities configured their Unix machines to call other machines on their modems overnight (the rates were cheaper) and synchronize files. Think of it like a very slow, ancient version of rsync. You would post on your school's Usenet server, which would then sync with one or more servers overnight. And eventually (hopefully…

> Used to be that some businesses and universities configured their Unix machines to call other machines on their modems overnight

I used to work in London, for Olivetti, which was partnered with AT&T. Olivetti's office was in Finsbury, just north of The City. AT&T were south of the river, near Vauxhall. I believe our Usenet feed (and our internet email) was couriered-over from Vauxhall on mag tape.

In those days, most ordinary businesses didn't have fixed-line internet access, and maintaining a Usenet feed over dial-up was expensive, even text-only.

Re: USENET rises again?

#33

Post by tptacek »

StevePerkins wrote: post #15
wackget wrote: post #5

As a programmer of over 30 years I still have never used Usenet and the reason is the barrier to entry. There is way too much friction. You need a paid (!) subscription to a provider, potentially a subscription to an indexer, plus client software. All of this to access what is essentially a pure text forum. Frankly I am not interested in jumping through hoops to access something which an "average person" would have n…

The article links to a free Usenet provider. I'm sure there are others also. The purpose for a PAID Usenet provider is for hosting binaries (i.e. piracy). You're paying someone for the bandwidth, and ignore or deal with the DMCA takedown notices. There is little to no reason to have a paid Usenet account just to read or post on pure text forums, and NOT download porn or other pirated content. That was really one of t…

Binaries also forced the centralization of Usenet, so that regional ISPs had no incentive to do anything but outsource it. It was unbelievably annoying to host a full-feed Usenet server in the late 1990s, and if you hosted anything less than one, people would arrange boycotts; better not to host Usenet at all.

Reddit is, I think, a better version of Usenet culture than the original.

Re: USENET rises again?

#34

Post by tptacek »

rout39574 wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every web-based message board has a better interface than the Usenet newsreaders did, if only because web message boards have more affordances for features than newsreaders do.

I disagree. I've never yet seen a forum environment which was more usable than GNUS was for me 20-mumble years ago.

I think you're taking for granted things like forum archive search that are table stakes now, but were space alien technology during Peak Usenet.

Re: USENET rises again?

#35

Post by mindcrime »

tptacek wrote: post #29
mindcrime wrote: post #18

I was in an AI conference yesterday, and there was a bunch of discussion in the chat about Slack channels, Discord servers, etc. So I was literally just lamenting the state of shared discussion forums, and commented that we all need to go back to Usenet and drop all these lame "walled garden" proprietary forums. I'd like to tell people "install Thunderbird, sign up for a free Usenet provider, and join comp.ai, comp.m…

The thing you want exists. It's called the Fediverse. Don't like the politics? You wouldn't have liked Usenet in its heyday either.

The thing you want exists. It's called the Fediverse.

For the most part, when people talk about "The Fediverse" they mean ActivityPub based sites. You could argue the point, since NNTP is "federated" as well, and one could certainly conceive of federating between the NNTP space and the ActivityPub space.

I'm a Fediverse user, fan, and advocate (mindcrime@fosstodon.org), but I specifically mentioned Usenet, because the "thing I want" in this context is, in fact, Usenet. Now if somebody wants to do the work to rebuild the Usenet hierarchy on top of the "wild west" that is the litany of servers on the Fediverse, build client support into Thunderbird, etc., then sure... that could probably turn into something interesting.

You wouldn't have liked Usenet in its heyday

Please don't presume to tell me what I would or wouldn't like. That's incredibly disrespectful. And in point of fact, I did like Usenet in its heyday.

Re: USENET rises again?

#36

Post by rjsw »

mindcrime wrote: post #18

I was in an AI conference yesterday, and there was a bunch of discussion in the chat about Slack channels, Discord servers, etc. So I was literally just lamenting the state of shared discussion forums, and commented that we all need to go back to Usenet and drop all these lame "walled garden" proprietary forums. I'd like to tell people "install Thunderbird, sign up for a free Usenet provider, and join comp.ai, comp.m…

I have a few people in my killfile so that I don't see messages from them but don't get much spam in the comp.* groups that I read.

The threading and only seeing new messages is a lot better in my Usenet client than any web forum that I use, including this one.

Re: USENET rises again?

#37

Post by nikodunk »

mindcrime wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you want exists. It's called the Fediverse. Don't like the politics? You wouldn't have liked Usenet in its heyday either.

The thing you want exists. It's called the Fediverse. For the most part, when people talk about "The Fediverse" they mean ActivityPub based sites. You could argue the point, since NNTP is "federated" as well, and one could certainly conceive of federating between the NNTP space and the ActivityPub space. I'm a Fediverse user, fan, and advocate (mindcrime@fosstodon.org), but I specifically mentioned Usenet, because th…

I’ve been very happy on the Fediverse (mastodon) since I took the plunge a few months ago. This is what the “early” internet at its best must have felt like. Real humans, technical discussions, random finds (painting!), sorted by created at desc.

Re: USENET rises again?

#38

Post by mindcrime »

rjsw wrote: post #36
mindcrime wrote: post #18

I was in an AI conference yesterday, and there was a bunch of discussion in the chat about Slack channels, Discord servers, etc. So I was literally just lamenting the state of shared discussion forums, and commented that we all need to go back to Usenet and drop all these lame "walled garden" proprietary forums. I'd like to tell people "install Thunderbird, sign up for a free Usenet provider, and join comp.ai, comp.m…

I have a few people in my killfile so that I don't see messages from them but don't get much spam in the comp.* groups that I read. The threading and only seeing new messages is a lot better in my Usenet client than any web forum that I use, including this one.

The threading and only seeing new messages is a lot better in my Usenet client than any web forum that I use, including this one.

Yep. The Usenet experience is nice. The only thing that really got me out of the habit of participating frequently was a combination of two factors:

1. My ISP quit providing NNTP access by default

2. So many other people moved off, that a lot of the groups became nothing but CfP's, spam, and maybe 1 actual interesting post per year.

But in the spirit of "be the change you want in the world" I guess I'll bit the bullet and sign up for a Usenet account somewhere, or stand up my own server and look into what it would take to get peering setup.

Re: USENET rises again?

#39

Post by BeetleB »

StevePerkins wrote: post #15
wackget wrote: post #5

As a programmer of over 30 years I still have never used Usenet and the reason is the barrier to entry. There is way too much friction. You need a paid (!) subscription to a provider, potentially a subscription to an indexer, plus client software. All of this to access what is essentially a pure text forum. Frankly I am not interested in jumping through hoops to access something which an "average person" would have n…

The article links to a free Usenet provider. I'm sure there are others also. The purpose for a PAID Usenet provider is for hosting binaries (i.e. piracy). You're paying someone for the bandwidth, and ignore or deal with the DMCA takedown notices. There is little to no reason to have a paid Usenet account just to read or post on pure text forums, and NOT download porn or other pirated content. That was really one of t…

> The purpose for a PAID Usenet provider is for hosting binaries (i.e. piracy). You're paying someone for the bandwidth, and ignore or deal with the DMCA takedown notices. There is little to no reason to have a paid Usenet account just to read or post on pure text forums, and NOT download porn or other pirated content.

This may reflect the state today, but back in the late 90's and early 00's, it was not. Even for the pure text forums, you had to pay someone. In the earlier days it was included in the ISP package, so you wouldn't see the costs. Or via your university. But I distinctly remember when my university dropped USENET lots of people complained because they couldn't get free access elsewhere.

For me: I used BBS's before I used USENET. BBS groups ("conferences") were much more civil, and had much better discourse. The moderation was very effective. When I moved to USENET, it was quite chaotic by comparison. And then with the onset of spam, I went elsewhere.

Re: USENET rises again?

#40

Post by focusedone »

mmstr wrote: post #22

If you want to read more about USENET through a criticism written while it was still used, I suggest to you the wonderfully anachronistic Unix Haters Handbook ( https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf ), it starts to talk about USENET at page 131

I'm through the first preface and this looks like a fantastic read. Thank you!
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