Reddit Migration

Asking someone to download and install a Usenet client then set it up to connect to a server of their choice and then subscribing to newsgroups is way above and beyond what most people are willing to do in 2023, sadly.

This is not true at all. People download phone clients all the time. And there were also Usenet web clients. Subscribing to newsgroups is exactly the same as subscribing to subreddets or kbin magazines. And you have to pick a server for Fedverse also, but the the Usenet server doesn't matter at all like a Fedverse server does.

The only reason people don't use Usenet is because the free servers disappeared and ISPs no longer provided it with your internet service.

Yes. plenty of articles coming out about how many in gen z are technology illiterate. I am started to see it at my workplace since we hire a lot of fresh college grads. getting more support calls for completely inane stuff that shows the person has zero basic technological knowledge, like the type of stuff that my you see from boomers. and often it's the issue is simple the user doing things wrong and refusing to understand or learn to do them correctly, like a boomer.

it's wild to think a 22yo is incompetent at basic computer skills, but like you said, all they do is social media crap on their phones. they have no idea how to actually work with PC/Mac applications, let alone solve basic problems or change settings.

That's a cute grumpy old man take but I don't think it really holds up, not as a main cause of the desertion from Usenet at least. It's true that Usenet arose during a time when people using computers actually understood how they worked and how to use them, but there were also a lot fewer people on the internet. I won't hazard a guess as to in raw numbers whether the number of people who understand computers rose or decreased, but even if it decreased the fact is that there are tons of people today who were on Usenet in the day and no longer are, even though they presumably know enough about computers to get on it. Insofar as simplicity of access matters (and oh, how it matters) I suspect it's not just about how people back then knew how to do harder things, but also that everything was harder. The differential between getting on Usenet and getting elsewhere on the internet was less large than today, where the internet overall has gotten much more user-friendly and Usenet has not.

Offhand I'd guess a more salient factor is discoverability. In order to get onto a forum you need to 1) learn that it exists, 2) be interested in checking it out, 3) check it out and 4) participate. How do people even hear about Usenet these days, let alone hear something that makes them want to check it out? When I think of it, my path to Usenet was via the TalkOrigins.org website. Even then I bounced off of actually getting onto the newsgroup for what might have been years before I finally succeeded. And that was back when ISPs supported newsgroups! How many other "portals" to Usenet newsgroups are there - I don't mean a web interface, I mean any website that a random person surfing the web might run into that would 1) let them know this newsgroup exists and 2) make them want to check it out/participate badly enough that they'll go through the many, many steps required to do so ?

Discoverability is even an issue once you are on Usenet. Here I am, a person who I think has a little bit of experience with the thing, asking on Kbin for people's recommendations because I don't have a way within Usenet to know which newsgroups are active and which are good. You have to trawl through the list, subscribe and then you find out, and the list is much too large for a layperson to trawl through usefully. I'm working with the advantage of vaguely remembering which newsgroups I liked and were humming back when I was there; I don't know how a total newcomer would manage. Maybe there are actual websites and portals out there that help, dunno if anyone has recommendations.

They even paid someone to design a semi-monetary points system and then scrapped it...

Its even having a mini resurgence at the moment.

[reader.usenet.monster/group?group=comp.lang.php]

This is awesome. Thanks!

Hi ! I only realized that you'd posted a link after u/btaf45 (@btaf45?) highlighted it. That's a really interesting usenet reader, do you know if there exists a website that highlights groups by activity, or can display the most recent messages from all groups like the main page of a social media aggregator? It seems to me that if reader.usenet.monster can do what it does it should be able to do that too but I don't see that kind of page on that site.

I heard that the comp.lang ones were still active ! And while I'm not wildly into computer languages as a subject of conversation I'm not totally not into it either. Are they all mostly about helping each other with coding questions or are there some with conversations that would be interesting to something with a more generic interest in computing?

Then there are also binaries groups which are NOT dead and still living ;)

Yes I gathered that :) I don't know if those tend to have lot of conversation though?

I see rec.arts.sf.written and talk.origins are active, which tracks honestly but is still a nice surprise. sci.bio.evolution seems deceased, I don't know if any other science group survived.

I’ve seen lots of people say “federation is like email”, but to me it’s like Usenet.

It is a lot like Usenet, but Usenet has some superior features.

1. Discussion groups are automatically merged across all servers. So it is decentralized but does not feel decentralized.

2. Newreaders only show you content that you have not already read/seen

3. Readers let you kill articles in subscribed newsgroups and threads within subscribed newsgroup articles so that you don't see them in the future.

I’ve seen lots of people say “federation is like email”, but to me it’s like Usenet.

You are correct but since 99.99% of people do not know what usenet is, it would be a pointless analogy. :) To be more specific than federation being like usenet: usenet was/is federated.

A couple years ago I was telling a 20something about usenet and I started to explain it the same way I always have: "It's like an email discussion list---" but I was interrupted for a question: "what's an email discussion list?" And this was a person who would describe themselves as geeky and good with computers. But has had no reason to interact with ancient techs like mailman. So first I had to explain what is an email list, which actually my friend thought sounded like a great idea. But having no experience of it, the ways in which usenet is an improvement were slightly lost.

Publius! 😂

Oh man. Sitting in the Unix lab, looking to see if there were more clues...

Any gaming alt you remember fondly and/or that might still be active?

Did you feel it was a hot mess in terms of the interface, or in terms of the culture?