What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
Maybe they found out that it takes effort?
The Doctor wrote:
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
Maybe they found out that it takes effort?
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
On 4/14/24 14:11, The Doctor wrote:
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
We grew old. Or at least realized that at 42 you are no longer
considered "young".
Still want to set up a Usenet node, though.
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
According to The Doctor <doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca>:
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
Some of us are still around albeit not exatly young.
Getting high schools to a Usenet project should be
the advocacy of everyone here!
Especially if it's something as complicated
as setting up a working nntp server
The community could bridge that gap with automagic configuration scripts and a GUI / TUI config client.
Rocksolid is on that track.
On 2024-04-14, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
On 4/14/24 08:02, Retro Guy wrote:
Maybe they found out that it takes effort?
LOL
I am not young but we created a node like 10 months a go
Chuckle.
There does seem to be an inverse relationship between the amount of
effort to do something and the number of people doing it.
news.hispagatos.org and we been getting people to sing up.
Grant Taylor wrote:
On 4/19/24 09:56, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
I'm 24 and I've rattled the idea around my head a couple times. Each
time, I am demotivated by the kind of person I come across,
ProTip: Aspire to more. You will fail. But failure part of the
learning process.
Even if you fail when aspiring to mire, you will quite likely be in a
better position than you were before you tried.
I think I'm qualified to say Pro because I've been paid for the last 20
years for 10:aspiring, 20:failing, 30:goto 10.
I agree. Fear of failure will just keep a person from accomplishing much
of anything.
It's good to realize that people who end up producing something awesome didn't just get it done on the first try, they tried, and tried again
with persistence.
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they
will ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment,
nor that they will institute a code of conduct which is actively
antifascist, because the values of the network are not actively
antifascist and in fact tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
On 20.04.2024 um 17:42 Uhr The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they
will ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment,
nor that they will institute a code of conduct which is actively
antifascist, because the values of the network are not actively
antifascist and in fact tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
This is something every newsmaster can decide himself.
This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
almost easy, in my estimation.
Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> writes:
On 20.04.2024 um 17:42 Uhr The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they
will ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment,
nor that they will institute a code of conduct which is actively
antifascist, because the values of the network are not actively
antifascist and in fact tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
This is something every newsmaster can decide himself.
Sort of. The NNTP and netnews protocols have exceptionally poor support
for moderation compared to just about any other message board software,
since essentially everything else was designed after NNTP and netnews and learned from its shortcomings.
You can insert an extremely heavy moderation step in front of all traffic (but only for private groups or if you can reach an agreement with your transitive peers), but the protocol is completely insecure, and while
there are patchwork solutions to that, you have to implement them
yourself. Or you have to rely on filtering, which is a very poor
moderation strategy that requires endless arms races with people trying to bypass it.
And all of the more advanced tools available in newer protocols simply
aren't there (for better or worse; Usenet people usually don't like most
of these, but people running other types of message board systems use them heavily): migrating messages to different threads, closing threads, user authentication and all the things that come with that such as poster bans
or pre-moderation for new users but not established users, etc. About the only thing you can do is delete the message off your server after the
fact, and the tools for doing that are very primitive. You can simulate
some of this by writing a whole pile of custom software that sits in the pre-moderation path, but now you've signed on for the project of writing a moderation system from scratch. The protocol and existing software base
are doing essentially nothing for you.
A lot of people prefer the Usenet model for various reasons, and that's
fine, that's something people can argue about. But Usenet's moderation
and filtering facilities are staggeringly primitive, and if those are a priority for you, Usenet is a bad technology choice and you should use something else.
The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
values.
This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least >> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me
wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy
the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will
ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact >> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
[...]
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
On 20/04/24 22:45, Sn!pe wrote:
The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
values.
This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least >>> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me >>> wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy >>> the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will >>> ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact >>> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
[...]
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
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have I made my point?
I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.
On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:39:50 -0000 (UTC)
doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) wrote:
Getting high schools to a Usenet project should be
the advocacy of everyone here!
Moderated NNTP newsgroups are well-suited to academic environments.
In certain academic and scientific circles much communication is still
done via email using clients that still have built-in NNTP capability.
All that we lacked was our own dedicated news server. When Iinstalled one—and eventually, several assigned to different roles—we
This year, the Usenet celebrates its 20th anniversary. It's thegrandfather of all groupware systems: a planetary discussion network
We can, and probably should, re-invent the Usenet. Even when it workswell -- there are, for example, many high-quality moderated Usenet
Let's imagine an alternative Usenet. It has the same number ofvirtual communities and the same number of nodes. But each node is
...
When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
just make much more sense, and make many things easier.
On 2024-04-17 18:07:39 +0000, SugarBug said:
On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:39:50 -0000 (UTC)
doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) wrote:
Getting high schools to a Usenet project should be
the advocacy of everyone here!
Moderated NNTP newsgroups are well-suited to academic environments.
In certain academic and scientific circles much communication is still
done via email using clients that still have built-in NNTP capability.
When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
just make much more sense, and make many things easier.
Not sure if access to global Usenet would be useful in businness
environment, but local NNTP server is a good idea, in my opinion. I was
never in a position to propose any changes, though.
Quick google search shows that the same thing was proposed many times
in the past, for example, a book Practical Internet Groupware by Jon
Udell starts with a chapter called "Lotus Notes, Web Bulletin Boards,
and NNTP Newsgroups":
<https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-internet-groupware/1565925378/ch01s07.html>
When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups.
Local newsgroups just make much more sense, and make many things
easier.
Not sure if access to global Usenet would be useful in businness
environment, but local NNTP server is a good idea, in my opinion. I was
never in a position to propose any changes, though.
When I worked at Stanford, I set up fairly extensive local newsgroups
to capture all sorts of reports and user requests that started out
as email. I really liked that system, and some of my co-workers did
as well, but I think it mostly or entirely went away after I left.
Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot
rarer than mail clients ...
... don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to work (on
the phone, in particular).
When I was at an email-heavy job (I'm thankfully not any more), II think that a good email client is a very valuable thing. As indicated
will say that I found a good mobile email client to be exceptionally
good at its job, good enough that I never bothered to set up Gnus for
work email (which is what I usually use to let me treat email as if
it's Usenet).
Being able to triage email on the train is incredibly useful and
I'm dubious there's a mobile news client with the same feature set
(although I admit I have not done a ton of research).
On 5/14/24 12:02, Russ Allbery wrote:
Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot rarer
than mail clients ...
I'd agree with and raise you that fat mail clients aren't nearly as
popular as they once were.
IMHO a web mail client is a poor excuse for an email client.
... don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to work (on the
phone, in particular).
I question that.
Mostly because I think people are largely ignorant of many aspects of communications.
I think that a good email client is a very valuable thing. As indicated above, web based email clients aren't good by any stretch of the
imagination.
It depends very much on what you want to do with it. At my last job,
I just used the Gmail web client (and various mobile clients) the whole
time I worked there for all work mail (which was very high-volume).
It worked great. And I'm a fairly technically sophisticated user who
uses probably the most sophisticated fat mail client (apart from HTML rendering) currently available.
Lots of people just use Gmail's web client. It's fine.
It even has a lot of the capabilities that you would expect in a fat
client, such as very rich filtering, although its filtering syntax
is pretty weird.
And so many other people use the Gmail web client that messages
generally look good in the Gmail web client, which sometimes matters.
I still use a web-based email client for work (a considerably worse
one than Gmail's), because I mostly don't use email for my job at all,
I read work email about once a week, and the only task that I need to
do in it is go through and skim and delete a bunch of messages and send
an email maybe once a month. Is that email ugly HTML top-posted crap?
Yes, it is. I cannot be bothered to do anything else given how little
I use it and how much I dislike setting up IMAP, and no one cares.
I really like my rich email client, but it's just not worth the
afternoon it would take to set it up to talk to my work email server
(and all the drawbacks of comingling work email with personal email,
or an even more complicated project of setting up multiple clients).
Not having to set up a client is a huge benefit for me that turns
out to matter more to me than the web UI. Which is, let me be clear,
utterly godawful, but I only use it once a week and I only use like
four buttons in the UI, so who cares.
Incidentally, if you want blocks of text to look good on the phone,
you pretty much have to use one of the other things Usenet folks love
to hate: HTML messages.
Not saying that Usenet should use HTML!
But it's already there, everyone knows how to use it,
most of email is in HTML these days anyway,
and there are millions of people and entire industries devoted to
making HTML look good. It's very, very hard for a theoretically
better alternative to compete with that.
On 20/04/24 22:45, Sn!pe wrote:
The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
values.
This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least >> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me >> wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy >> the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will >> ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact >> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
[...]
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
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have I made my point?
I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
Sn!pe wrote:
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations, Usenet is not remotely an example of free speech?newsserver admins can freely downshut anything they don't like, and many servers require a fee to use,
prohibiting the impoverished from using them.
The conceptualization of discussion as ?debates? to be ?won? is
regressive. All members of a discussion come in with the goal of
expanding their knowledge, and whether or not their original position upon entrance is correct or not is wholly irrelevant to the final outcome.
Sn!pe wrote:
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations,
Usenet is not remotely an example of free speech-newsserver admins can
freely downshut anything they don't like, and many servers require a
fee to use, prohibiting the impoverished from using them.
The conceptualization of discussion as "debates" to be "won" is
regressive.
All members of a discussion come in with the goal of
expanding their knowledge, and whether or not their original position upon >entrance is correct or not is wholly irrelevant to the final outcome.
Sn!pe wrote:
You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
will fail.
Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations, Usenet is not >remotely an example of free speechnewsserver admins can freely downshut >anything they don't like, and many servers require a fee to use,
prohibiting the impoverished from using them.
Server: paganini.bofh.team (48696)
Server: freenews.netfront.net (47473)
Server: news.samoylyk.net (45909)
Server: news.dizum.net (45728)
Server: news.alphared.net (45728)
Server: news.blueworldhosting.com (45059)
Server: news.novabbs.org (42485)
Server: news.i2pn2.org (42473)
Server: news.mixmin.net (41841)
Server: news.alt119.net (40530)
Server: news.usenet.ovh (15322)
Server: gallaxial.com (5504)
Server: news.chmurka.net (3752)
Server: news.grc.com (39)
List of Free Usenet Servers: https://sybershock.com/#usenet
Van Camp <van@ca.mp> writes:
When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
just make much more sense, and make many things easier.
When I worked at Stanford, I set up fairly extensive local newsgroups to capture all sorts of reports and user requests that started out as email.
I really liked that system, and some of my co-workers did as well, but I think it mostly or entirely went away after I left.
Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot rarer than
mail clients and don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to
work (on the phone, in particular). When I was at an email-heavy job (I'm thankfully not any more), I will say that I found a good mobile email
client to be exceptionally good at its job, good enough that I never
bothered to set up Gnus for work email (which is what I usually use to let
me treat email as if it's Usenet). Being able to triage email on the
train is incredibly useful and I'm dubious there's a mobile news client
with the same feature set (although I admit I have not done a ton of research).
The Doctor wrote:
What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
Maybe they found out that it takes effort?
They came aboard and saw what kind of network they'd be supporting, and
they noped out.
I'm 24 and I've rattled the idea around my head a couple times. Each time,
I am demotivated by the kind of person I come across, one of whom I quote directly and whose question I am responding to.
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