It's not so much that people forget about Usenet as that they forget why it died.
It got spammed to death.
It lost control over its culture, and that culture was crucial to its functioning.
It was too problematic for ISPs (or others) to provide ready access to it: spam, harassment, child pornography, and copyright violations all posed massive concerns.
There was no viable business model for providing the service.
@Brook Ultimately, more the social-media elements than the technical-media elements, but the medium is the message, so they feed off each other tremendously.
My memories of Usenet start in the mid-late 1980s, when it was a small, mostly academically-selective community of a few thousand people, also coloured by my own youth, immaturity, and ignorance. But it left a warm sense of a place I've wanted to got back to. Of course you never can.
I've thought a lot about what made it good and bad.
@Brook Ultimately, the content and dynamics are more important than the mechanisms, but since one feeds the other, both matter.
There's also who's included, who's not, on what basis, and a mess of other stuff.
I make heavy use of Reddit, none of the chans, various other networks over the years: #slashdot, #kuro5hin, #hn, #googleplus, #ello, #imzy.
Some have worked well, some not. (Imzy is an excellent case of the latter.)
@Brook One thing Mastodon / OSocial are offering that I've looked at for a while is the idea of a /locally-organised/ community, where "local" isn't (necessarily) based on /geographical/ space, but there's the idea of places nearer and further from others within the network.
On Mastodon presently, you could draw a hierarchy of distances, some official, some more logical / semantic:
Local -> MastodoNet -> OSocial Fediverse -> Social networks (Birdland, FB, G+) -> Web -> Internet -> Universe.
@dredmorbius I was late to Usenet, probably getting started on it no more than a couple months before the fateful September. Casual Reddit user, and occasional chan lurker out of sociological interest. Fertile ground for emerging culture, because it's heavily fertilized.
I keep thinking my perfect social service would merge timeline from Twitter, auto-expiring posts from chans, single sign-on + anon accounts from Reddit, and a loosely-coupled long-form capability from Medium.
@Brook Good points all.
Keep in mind that all data expires. It's just poorly specified in most systems.
@dredmorbius That's definitely true. I'm thinking a defined public timeline expiration period, say 36 or 48 hours, combined with the option to easily save to a clipping folder only viewable by participants in the clipped thread. Objects (whether posts or threads) in the clipping folder could be reactivated by reposted to the public timeline, as long as all participant accounts are active and haven't blocked the clipped object.
Clearly, I've thought more about this than even I realize...
@Brook Longer. At least a week, maybe 3-6 months.
If it's not been found by then, expire.
CDNs may have good guidence on cache hit rates.
I can't tell if you're intending to imply that
> It lost control over its culture
led to the other issues that plagued it, but I think for the most part it was the gate that most needed guarding.
Having said all that -- I can't help but imagine a world where the neverending November can be averted, where the wild things can actually be walled out to keep the city safe.
And I can't help but hope it might be done with Mastodon.
@sydneyfalk I'd have to re-read that and see if I still agree with myself :smile:
I think there was another point someone made elsewhere that's missing from the list, though the copyright issue was a huge one, it effectively imposes cognate costs (or risks) on any large gateway.
The interplay betweeen the failures was systemic: weakened culture meant poorer defence against other attacks.
> I'd have to re-read that and see if I still agree with myself 😄
Good to know that's not just me! I keep thinking it's possible early-onset Alzheimer's in my case. "Shit, what did I write now? Do I actually think it? Well, let's find out."
@sydneyfalk There's stuff I've written I have no memory of. Others that I have to read to see if I follow the logic or argument. I often write as a tool for figuring out what I really think about something, and not infrequently end up the opposite of how I started off.
It can take forever just to find the question, let alone answer.
I cringe a little less and nod a little more, reading works from a ways back. I don't know if I'm becoming a better writer or a worse reader.
Definitely not just me, then. :) Minor consolation on my end.
I've told my wife a few times to make sure that when I'm mentally gone to put my books on my bookshelf, because that way I can read my own stories for the first time ever, like a reader would have. :) I actually like that idea a little bit. Silver lining, I suppose.
@sydneyfalk Ha! That's ... an intruiging idea.
Back when most of my online activity was researching my own technical problems, I'd have the experience of looking up some problem, and finding a /really/ well-written post on the topic, then look up at the author...
If I was lucky, I'd already found the solution. If I wasn't, I hadn't.
@dredmorbius usenet existed for years without a 'viable business model'
It just had shitty moderation options.
@ajr @dredmorbius in UK was popular well into the 2000s, until broadband available in all areas - Usenet software had offline reading/replying, using forums required being online and incurring phone call costs all the time (often tying up a phone that was wanted for voice calls).
Agree that moderation was issue; there were trolls who put serious effort into destroying UK groups and eventually cops had to deal with them b/c they were doxxing/stalking ppl
still worthwhile today ! I think doomsday" situations/nationwide shutdowns of net are *extremely* unlikely in Europe, but local disruption is not uncommon (if vehicle knocks over VDSL street box it takes BT at least 2 weeks to fix it).
Even in "rich" nations like UK/NL/DE providers ruthlessly cherrypick which areas get good connectivity both fixed and mobile, low income urban areas and remote rural areas often fare poorly unless govt subsidises.
@dredmorbius Right, but the reason it stopped existing wasn't that it didn't have a business model. The reason it stopped existing was that it had shitty moderation options.
(And it still exists, it's just a cesspool.)
@morphius Did youy RTFA, or even RTFT?
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