8 May
2018
8 May
'18
8:28 p.m.
On 05/08/2018 11:53 AM, Seth Morabito wrote:
I think a lot about the death of Usenet, the reasons
for it, and what
we've learned. I don't know if I've come to any insightful conclusions,
but I do greatly miss it. In so many ways we've gone backward. We lost a
truly decentralized message board system where one log-in allowed you to
read anything about any topic, and replaced it with a mess of
incompatible systems. On one hand we've got phpBB forums scattered all
over the web that don't talk to each other, each of which requires its
own login and password. On the other hand we have walled gardens like
Reddit and Facebook that offer much of what Usenet did, but with clumsy
user interfaces and centralized control and massive privacy concerns.
There's just nothing like Usenet.
I've seen multiple people in this thread talk as if Usenet is gone / dead.
As an active Usenet user (daily) I wonder why people say that. I still
see a number of good conversations take place in newsgroups.
I also participate in newsgroups hosted on an open to the public but not
peered news server daily.
I wonder how much of what is on the web could possibly benefit from a
good web interface to a (potentially moderated) newsgroup.
Why re-invent storing and exchanging messages when NNTP works. …well in
my opinion.
I find more and more communities moving to Facebook,
which worries me
greatly. I'm not a fan. Other than that, mailing lists seem to continue
to cling to life as the gold standard of technical communication.
I just saw this happen on NANOG. Someone asked about a group for DSL
Network Operators and subsequently someone else mentioned that they just
created a Facebook group, which got the obligatory "what about people
that don't use Facebook" follow up. Predictably there was yet another
follow up indicating that it was the fault of people not using Facebook
for not being able to access a public forum.
I am personally quite happy with (properly configured) mailing lists and
newsgroups.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die