It is ironical that we talk about usenet everywhere but on usenet. Events like the blackout on reddit and the scramble to move to alternate platforms would hardly be necessary if usenet worked clearly as a discussion platform.

While everyone blames spam for the slow death of discussions on usenet, I think there are a couple of other reasons:

  • access over http
  • searchability

These two reasons are why Google Groups continues to work while discussions on usenet barely do.

Usenet has to evolve to provide solutions to these problems:

  • spam: moderated groups are an insufficient solution when compared to moderation tools provided by modern discussion platforms.
  • usenet over http: people should be able to carry on discussions using browsers as well as apps. They should be able to share links to these discussions as well.
  • search: people should be able to conduct a search across all discussions by using native as well as third-party search engines (Google, Bing, Brave etc).
  • @ksr_utOPM
    link
    3
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I don’t know the details. My guess, based on the FAQ, is the sdf.* hierarchy would be accessible internally while the public newsgroups (comp.* etc) would be dealt with in the regular manner.

    • @alien
      link
      41 year ago

      It seems the sdf hierarchy is not carried by the Usenet provider. I checked on Newshosting and Newsgroupdirect.

      • @ksr_utOPM
        link
        41 year ago

        It might be a local newsgroup.