What happened to Usenet?

[ChrisC]

What's happened to Usenet? It used to be place for great discussion. Now it's just a place full of SPAM. What a shame. I just popped into uk.music.rave full of adverts. Not one decent post on there. Is Usenet a dying thing?

 

[fractionMan]

I'm amazed anyone bothers to spam it anymore tbh.

 

[stupid dogbot]

Other forms of communication ended up being more popular.

 

[Beanburger]

The internet became popular, and populated with stupid people who don't like to read, and who prefer pictures and the judicious use of smilies.

 

[ChrisC]

I'm amazed anyone bothers to spam it anymore tbh.

That's what I don't understand. It's a dying medium, yet people constantly SPAM it. It's a shame because you can sometimes find some great little post's on it.

 

[Jackobi]

A lot of ISPs dropped their Usenet servers, the free servers are temperamental, not many people are willing to pay extra subs for Usenet access particularly if just subscribing to text only newsgroups.

 

[Sunray]

Unmoderated and full of idiots and full of people who spend every single moment of their pitiful lives trolling. It was doomed the moment they invented the protocol.

 

[Beanburger]

Unmoderated and full of idiots and full of people who spend every single moment of their pitiful lives trolling. It was doomed the moment they invented the protocol.

Urban or Usenet?

 

[weltweit]

I thought Usenet died when Google [1] bought Deja




[1] or was that Yahoo I forget.

 

[grit]

Unmoderated and full of idiots and full of people who spend every single moment of their pitiful lives trolling. It was doomed the moment they invented the protocol.

Far from it, it was at a time where net access was not generally available to the public so not as much weeding out was required.

Granted it is a wasteland now

 

[weltweit]

Seeing as Usenet is populated by thousands of my posts with my real name and real email address [1] I will be more than happy when it is completely deleted in its entirety.



[1] Actually I am now having to forget that email address, there were 200,000 spams in it last time I looked.

 

[pinkmonkey]

A lot of ISPs dropped their Usenet servers, the free servers are temperamental, not many people are willing to pay extra subs for Usenet access particularly if just subscribing to text only newsgroups.

I use my brothers easynews account for downloading. I can't do the usual torrents / filesharing coz I'm on a 3g dongle, no landline, or I save up my downloading for when I'm at my mothers. I've no idea how much it costs him a month but he's currently got about 500gb of downloading left. Works for me.

 

[Jackobi]

Works for me.

Free, binary Usenet access, why wouldn't it?

Binaries made Usenet provision profitable, therefore it now comes at a price that most are unwilling to pay.

 

[gentlegreen]

[1] Actually I am now having to forget that email address, there were 200,000 spams in it last time I looked.

Yep.

I foolishly once used my work email address to give a technical question more credibility.

 

[editor]

The demise of usenet helped shape the posting rules here. I used to love uk.misc, uk.local.london and uk.music.rave.

What was the one where the bloke would go ballistic if you didn't have your sig correctly formatted and left a space in? Was it uk.demon.local?

 

[Beanburger]

The demise of usenet helped shape the posting rules here.

You mean the bare-bones implementation of VB, with no sigs, no avatars and a paltry collection of smilies?

 

[editor]

You mean the bare-bones implementation of VB, with no sigs, no avatars and a paltry collection of smilies?

Yes, that and the need for strong but friendly moderation policies.

 

[Beanburger]

Yes, that and the need for strong but friendly moderation policies.

Is that Newspeak for "you're about to be banned"?

 

[gentlegreen]

The demise of usenet helped shape the posting rules here. I used to love uk.misc, uk.local.london and uk.music.rave.

What was the one where the bloke would go ballistic if you didn't have your sig correctly formatted and left a space in? Was it uk.demon.local?

"Huge" on uk.misc / uk.transport would delight in telling you off for using Outlook Express and breaking quoting etiquette

 

[ChrisC]

Far from it, it was at a time where net access was not generally available to the public so not as much weeding out was required.

Granted it is a wasteland now

Such a shame, I had some good times on Usenet. I guess I'm just being melancholy about the past.

 

[ChrisC]

The demise of usenet helped shape the posting rules here. I used to love uk.misc, uk.local.london and uk.music.rave.

What was the one where the bloke would go ballistic if you didn't have your sig correctly formatted and left a space in? Was it uk.demon.local?

I don't remember, but there was some real fascinating individuals on those groups.