Topic drift: The death of Usenet

[Remco Rijnders]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 02:45:39AM -0700, Sam Trenholme wrote:
> > Drifting quite off-topic here... but missing usenet myself, I wonder if
> > anyone knows of something "nearly as good as" ? And please, no
> > webforums or facebook.
> 
> Well, to answer that question, I would have to know what it is you
> like about Usenet more than, say, PhpBB or Facebook.  When I was
> saying goodbye to Usenet this week, I asked on rec.audio.pro about why
> it is they weren't using a web forum which covers the same topic.
>
> People liked the ability to read and post offline (one great strength
> which no web forum has today); people like the threading a good
> newsreader does; people like not having to see postings they have
> already read again; and blind people like the accessibility of Usenet.

The things I don't like about these easily outnumber the things which I do
like. For example, with usenet you have (had) discussions on all possible
topics on one server. With forums, you have to find each individual server
and create an useraccount if you want to post or sometimes even to read.

Also, I could do without reading on things I'm interested in without
Google or whatever advertising agency propping up ads that I did not ask
for.

You have to remember to visit all the forums you're interested in instead
of having all discussions "show up" in one place which you can read at
your own leisure and offline if so desired. Forums which have RSS-feeds in
place might be able to elaviate some of this, but it still seems
suboptimal to me.

Every forum has its own controls, look and threading model (?) to get used
to. I like to control myself how posts should be threaded and would like
to be able to do my own filtering and scoring, etc.

> I think what most people want out of Usenet can be done with something
> like PhpBB with NNTP support.  You connect to the server on port 119,
> it looks like a NNTP server.  The server has a "text" hierarchy for
> people who don't want any HTML (it converts the postings to/from ASCII
> text), and a "html" or "ubb" hierarchy for people who want to
> read/post rich text/HTML/whatever via NNTP.

Something which can turn a forum into a NNTP feed or a mailinglist would
be most useful to me. Ideally it would also do this in one place.

FudForum [1] is open source forum software which also allows mailinglist
and nntp interfaces. It looks useful, but I guess it only works for those
who actively install fudforum as their board of choice. If you want to
follow discussions on a PhpBB forum you'd still be out of luck.

> There are advantages to this over Usenet: Post-moderation; the owner
> of the board can remove the spam, trolls, and flamers.  (I would also
> require registration to access the NNTP server) A web interface that
> is more friendly and modern (and can be used from an average
> smartphone, unlike Usenet, which requires 80 columns) for most users.

There have been initiatives to (mode)rate articles on usenet such as
NoCeM control messages, or GroupLens [2] ratings. All of these seem to
have died a silent death though, while both of them seem like workable
solutions to me had they gained enough support and momentum.

> I don't think Usenet's way of propagating "articles" (postings) makes
> sense today; it's a solution to a problem that no longer exists.  I
> think a web forum with a NNTP backend would satisfy the needs of those
> who want the flavor of Usenet again.  These do exist, but I can't
> think of an open-source one.
> 
> A final thought: I think Usenet would not have died if Usenet had
> embraced instead of shunned HTML during the dot-com expansion, and if
> a solution to runaway flamewars had been found (probably by
> implementing a form of after-the-fact moderation).

I agree that the propogation of articles is not really needed anymore. And
had HTML be allowed, it would have played much nicer with modern browsers
and clients. Those who want to read "text only" can then easily filter on
their end (or even ask the NNTP server to show them the text only version
if available?). There where valid arguments against HTML at first, but
they do seem a bit silly in these days when usenet is mostly used to
distribute massive amounts of binaries.

Perhaps what would make me happy is to have a proxy NNTP-server which
knows about my accounts on the various forums and regulary pulls in feeds
from those boards and allows me to read and reply from my newsclient.

Remco

[1] http://fudforum.org
[2] See for an article on this
http://www.grouplens.org/papers/pdf/usenix97.pdf