Netnews: The Origin Story

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Sn!pe

2024-11-06 11:42:11 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.

# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PTB, FIBS

My pet rock Gordon just is.

Wolfgang Agnes

2024-11-06 14:17:35 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.
# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

Lol---amazing. For some reason, I am deeply involved with it too,
though by the time I got involved with it (early 2000s) it was perhaps
at the end of its heyday. Nevertheless, I continue to believe in it.
Not in its ``success'', ``popularity'' or whatever. I believe in the
idea.

(*) The paper

I just finished reading the paper. Almost everything in it was new to
me, so I'd like to thank the author very much for having written it.
(When I realized it was a 2024-paper, I was amazed! At first I thought
it was a pretty old paper.)

I was struck by the conclusions regarding abuse and governance. Perhaps
it is not hard to notice that these are the problems and that they were
never solved. I have been thinking a bit about these things for many
years. I think I've tried to solve these problems myself. Not very
seriously, but in my mind. I never did. And recently I think I
convinced myself that I should not even try anymore. This giving up
seems to have been fruitful because I actually believe that we should
have smaller groups, smaller networks. It seems that it's the small
ones that actually do very well.

In other words, I came to the conclusion that anonimity is not that
important and having a boss dictating the local rules isn't so bad when
anyone can duplicate the whole software-server-thing and start your own.

I was also struck by the author's apparent opinion that they should've
used cryptography if it were easier and more available back then. In
other words, it does seem that Steven Bellovin would care for
authenticity and not necessarily confidentiality (after all these
discussions are mostly public).

Now that Google Groups has left and that sysadmins have been keeping
spam out (THANK YOU SO MUCH, sysadmins of the USENET!), I think the
USENET is pretty good again. The volume is low, so it's been great fun
to be here again sharing ideas and learning with the rest of the world
once again without the ads and all the unnecessary whistles and bells of
the web. (Though I miss more people with expertise knowledge in all
areas, so I do wish that the volume grows a bit and I believe it will
because the network seems to be in order once again. Thanks to everyone
who has contributed to this.)

2024-11-06 15:54:51 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.
# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

Lol---amazing. For some reason, I am deeply involved with it too,
though by the time I got involved with it (early 2000s) it was perhaps
at the end of its heyday. Nevertheless, I continue to believe in it.
Not in its ``success'', ``popularity'' or whatever. I believe in the
idea.
(*) The paper
I just finished reading the paper. Almost everything in it was new to
me, so I'd like to thank the author very much for having written it.
(When I realized it was a 2024-paper, I was amazed! At first I thought
it was a pretty old paper.)
I was struck by the conclusions regarding abuse and governance. Perhaps
it is not hard to notice that these are the problems and that they were
never solved. I have been thinking a bit about these things for many
years. I think I've tried to solve these problems myself. Not very
seriously, but in my mind. I never did. And recently I think I
convinced myself that I should not even try anymore. This giving up
seems to have been fruitful because I actually believe that we should
have smaller groups, smaller networks. It seems that it's the small
ones that actually do very well.
In other words, I came to the conclusion that anonimity is not that
important and having a boss dictating the local rules isn't so bad when
anyone can duplicate the whole software-server-thing and start your own.
I was also struck by the author's apparent opinion that they should've
used cryptography if it were easier and more available back then. In
other words, it does seem that Steven Bellovin would care for
authenticity and not necessarily confidentiality (after all these
discussions are mostly public).
Now that Google Groups has left and that sysadmins have been keeping
spam out (THANK YOU SO MUCH, sysadmins of the USENET!), I think the
USENET is pretty good again. The volume is low, so it's been great fun
to be here again sharing ideas and learning with the rest of the world
once again without the ads and all the unnecessary whistles and bells of
the web. (Though I miss more people with expertise knowledge in all
areas, so I do wish that the volume grows a bit and I believe it will
because the network seems to be in order once again. Thanks to everyone
who has contributed to this.)

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about how I
would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts, and I don't
think I would.

It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of groups, or
aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

I don't know how else I would be able to handle 10x the content.

Rich

2024-11-06 16:29:22 UTC

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about
how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts,
and I don't think I would.

Been there, seen that.... Circa 1995 (I forget which groups now) the
text posting volume was so great in the few groups I was following that
it was not possible to keep up. I was always behind, and falling
further behind each day. Eventually the fall behind problem reached a
point where I decided to just drop out. So I disappeared for a good
ten years or so. Of course, when I did return again, Usenet was a
shadow of its former self as far as text posting rates go.

It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

One did have to do both, and even so, the volume was impossible to keep
up with if the group was at all active.

2024-11-06 20:37:14 UTC

Post by Rich

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about
how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts,
and I don't think I would.

It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

One did have to do both, and even so, the volume was impossible to keep
up with if the group was at all active.

This is an interesting problem. How is it solved in modern social media?

Rich

2024-11-06 21:48:40 UTC

Post by Rich

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about
how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts,
and I don't think I would.

It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

One did have to do both, and even so, the volume was impossible to keep
up with if the group was at all active.

This is an interesting problem. How is it solved in modern social media?

If by "modern social media" you mean the likes of FB and its ilk,
presumably by having "the algorithm" showing you stuff, and then you
just doom scroll through the algorithm driven feed. And if stuff does
not get put on your feed, you are unaware of its existance.

Computer Nerd Kev

2024-11-06 20:15:50 UTC

Post by D
This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about how I
would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts, and I don't
think I would.
It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of groups, or
aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

True, although in desperation for content my focus has expanded to
lurking in groups I'm barely interested in. I might not mind
needing to narrow my focus back a lot.

Post by D
I don't know how else I would be able to handle 10x the content.

What I don't know is how people handle 10x this content on popular
Web forums. On Usenet you can skip through things quickly with an
interface of your choice. On a Web forum just ten new threads in
five sub-forums are a chore to navigate through, and then you have
things like "mega" threads that are hundreds of pages of flat
posts. I've never worked out how people cope with those, let alone
prefer them!

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

Rich

2024-11-06 20:26:13 UTC

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about
how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts,
and I don't think I would.
It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

True, although in desperation for content my focus has expanded to
lurking in groups I'm barely interested in. I might not mind needing
to narrow my focus back a lot.

In it's heyday in the mid 90's, the posting rate was such that in
popular groups, one could spend hours reading, clearing the rest of a
thread that went off the rails, marking all as read on entirely
uninteresting threads, and managing to clear what seemed like a
thousand or two posts. And then, at the end of it all, if one had
managed to sift through, say, 1000 posts, finding that the group had
received 1250 new posts during the time one had cleared the 1000.

The rate of the firehose of posts is hard to imagine if one wasn't
active on usenet at the time to witness it in person.

2024-11-06 20:42:43 UTC

Post by Rich

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about
how I would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts,
and I don't think I would.
It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of
groups, or aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

True, although in desperation for content my focus has expanded to
lurking in groups I'm barely interested in. I might not mind needing
to narrow my focus back a lot.

In it's heyday in the mid 90's, the posting rate was such that in
popular groups, one could spend hours reading, clearing the rest of a
thread that went off the rails, marking all as read on entirely
uninteresting threads, and managing to clear what seemed like a
thousand or two posts. And then, at the end of it all, if one had
managed to sift through, say, 1000 posts, finding that the group had
received 1250 new posts during the time one had cleared the 1000.
The rate of the firehose of posts is hard to imagine if one wasn't
active on usenet at the time to witness it in person.

I do have vague memories from around 1995-1997 of toying with usenet and
almost getting crushed by the content.

2024-11-06 20:39:54 UTC

True, although in desperation for content my focus has expanded to
lurking in groups I'm barely interested in. I might not mind
needing to narrow my focus back a lot.

Same for me.

Post by D
I don't know how else I would be able to handle 10x the content.

Well, I grant you that with my terminal based, key driven interface, I
breeze through posts way, way quicker than a web forum. But even that is
not enough if the content would be 10x.

2024-11-06 15:52:22 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.
# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

What has made you stick with it through all these years? How come you have
not been swept up by the winds of facebook and other social media?

Sn!pe

2024-11-06 17:17:25 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.
# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

What has made you stick with it through all these years? How come you have
not been swept up by the winds of facebook and other social media?

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around It."
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/>

If I fall out with a NSP admin, I can regain access by using a different
NSP. Fuckerbergs* have the power of individual censorship.

Also, Fuckerbergs drive a coach and horses through user privacy
to facilitate commercial gain. I fart in their general direction.

* Fuckerberg: generic term for controllers of proprietary networks.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PTB, FIBS

My pet rock Gordon just is.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

2024-11-06 18:56:15 UTC

Post by Sn!pe
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around It."
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/>

China and Russia being the biggest counterexamples to date.

Computer Nerd Kev

2024-11-06 20:20:19 UTC

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Sn!pe
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around It."
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/>

China and Russia being the biggest counterexamples to date.

Most Usenet news servers weren't blocked in China last time I
checked, and Russians even have their own news servers.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

2024-11-06 20:37:56 UTC

Post by Rich
Yes, it is in the form of a pdf, but be that as it may, it makes for an
<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf>

Thank you for posting!

Writing as someone addicted to Usenet for 30 years it's good to see the
whole story, much of which was new to me; I've saved it, thanks again.
# Usenet was my first love
# And it will be my last...

What has made you stick with it through all these years? How come you have
not been swept up by the winds of facebook and other social media?

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around It."
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/>
If I fall out with a NSP admin, I can regain access by using a different
NSP. Fuckerbergs* have the power of individual censorship.
Also, Fuckerbergs drive a coach and horses through user privacy
to facilitate commercial gain. I fart in their general direction.
* Fuckerberg: generic term for controllers of proprietary networks.

This is a good point! But you are not worried about the essentially
unencrypted nature of usenet?

Sn!pe

2024-11-06 22:45:55 UTC