Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USENET rises again?

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 235 posts

Re: USENET rises again?

#71

Post by datavirtue »

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.

Literally perplexed at that statement. That was the only place for solid community, damn good information, and endless free file downloads in it's heyday. The barriers that made people drop it actually make it more attractive these days since the masses will never show up.

Re: USENET rises again?

#72

Post by alexpotato »

I just recently started reading Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge and it's fascinating that he thought Usenet (or something VERY similar) would be how civilizations communicate with each other across the galaxy.

(Granted, it was written in the early 90s but feels very apropos to see a post about it here on HN)

Re: USENET rises again?

#73

Post by thenose »

There are a lot of people saying that Usenet is no longer appropriate given today's social landscape. But it's interesting that Satoshi started Bittorrent by posting to the crypto mailing list. That was 2008, a decade and a half ago. But Usenet had died long before that, and long after Usenet-style newsgroups had gone out of fashion.

Text is timeless, and it's worth keeping an open mind that it can work. Maybe specific niche interests are the key; crypto is a big topic now, but back then only a few enthusiasts cared.

Re: USENET rises again?

#74

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

It's been a while but I don't recall a ton of politics on the usenet groups I used to participate in (mostly tech subjects). Of course there were groups for politics, and sometimes a thread would go off on a tangent, but the nice thing about usenet is it was easy to killfile people or threads that you didn't want to read anymore.

When I used it it seemed like it was mostly real names (.edu accounts) at least on the groups I read, so maybe that kept people in check a bit. Though that would have been easy to spoof I'm sure.

My department also had some local groups that did not propagate. So it must be possible to stand up your own NNTP server and have groups for your local users that are at least in that sense "private"

Re: USENET rises again?

#75

Post by queuebert »

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.

Agree, except with Pine (now Alpine) as the aggregator. Very high signal-to-noise ratio.

Re: USENET rises again?

#76

Post by alexpotato »

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…

> since I'm not sure what the state of spam being sent to the various Usenet groups is

Isn't this why some groups were moderated?

Re: USENET rises again?

#77

Post by hollerith »

rout39574 wrote: post #60
hollerith wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation policies matter a lot. The tech behind Usenet makes moderation much more costly than it is on anything commonly called a social network (and the people running Usenet are opposed to moderation of anything other than outright spam or so that's how it always was when I stopped paying attention about 15 years ago).

I agree that moderation policies are important. But I think it's missing a point to decide that "A social network with bad moderation policies" is therefore not a social network. Easy comparison: Mastadon has distributed identity, and localized management of moderation. Is this sufficient that we should deem it "not a social network"? I think not. I think there was no real consensus in USENET towards the appropriate…

>All the species of technically simple moderation patterns were present there

I consider voting (allowing readers to upvote and downvote, which is extremely quick and easy compared to writing a comment) an important technically simple moderation pattern, and I'd be very surprised to learn the voting on Usenet articles was ever possible.

Re: USENET rises again?

#78

Post by hollerith »

rout39574 wrote: post #66
hollerith wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Social media" to me refers only to services owned and controlled by a corporation (or maybe a non-profit organization similar to how the Guardian newpaper is owned by a non-profit) and targeted at average consumers, not just techies. Although there have been corporations (e.g., ISPs, Clarinet, Deja News) involved with Usenet, no one (corporation, organization, person) has ever owned or controlled Usenet. "The Big-8…

Why do you find central corporate control to be a defining feature? I am drawn much more to the technical features of the system. I think of IRC, Mastadon, and Jabber as social networks; If you rule out Jabber it seems to me you must also rule out AIM. Perhaps we're fumbling for a new vocabulary term, and "Social network" is too vague to be effective.

>Perhaps . . . "Social network" is too vague to be effective.

I was talking about the term "social media".

Re: USENET rises again?

#79

Post by h2odragon »

tptacek wrote: post #34
rout39574 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

we just ran `grep` on the news spool directories

Usenet with full access to a big server was fun. With just NNTP access, it was diminished. 3 to 6 hops out in UUCP/WWIV/FIDOnet land it was a different animal. Still of use but high friction.

Re: USENET rises again?

#80

Post by reidrac »

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…

> sign up for a free Usenet provider

Sorry, but you make it sound like there are many. That allow posting, and free, I think I only know one.

Post reply on HN