What with all the kerfuffle over on Reddit perhaps it is time for a Usenet revival... though I guess the moderation system A) needs someone at the wheel and B) needs an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century

Michael
--
NPC Rights activist | Nameless Abominations are people too

Michael Lush <mjlush@gmail.com> wrote:
> What with all the kerfuffle over on Reddit perhaps it is time for a
> Usenet revival...

yep, some of us are still here! And there seems to be a trickle of users
giving usenet a new try.

There's also a tiny new gaming related hierarchy over here:
https://campaignwiki.org/news It's isolated from regular usenet yet,
but it uses the same technology.

> though I guess the moderation system A) needs someone at the wheel

hm, I don't know, how much moderation do we need? This place has worked
without moderation for decades.

> and B) needs an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century

for me usenet works just fine the old school way. But thunderbird works
quite nicely and apparently there's a decent client for iOS:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newstap-usenet-newsreader/id292410356

cheers,

lkh

On Friday, June 16, 2023 at 9:10:17 PM UTC+1, Laurens Kils-Huetten wrote:
> Michael Lush <> wrote:

> There's also a tiny new gaming related hierarchy over here:
> https://campaignwiki.org/news It's isolated from regular usenet yet,
> but it uses the same technology.
Interesting will have a look at that

> > though I guess the moderation system A) needs someone at the wheel
> hm, I don't know, how much moderation do we need? This place has worked
> without moderation for decades.

If /r/rpg turn up en masse we will need moderation, those Green Card lawyers are still out there waiting to pounce

> > and B) needs an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century
> for me usenet works just fine the old school way. But thunderbird works
> quite nicely and apparently there's a decent client for iOS:
> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newstap-usenet-newsreader/id292410356

I'm so worried about the client software, but j I'm willing to bet the server software is pretty vulnerable
by modern standards. it used to be pretty easy to send out cancels to posts and newsgroups and things will really
go down the drain when copyright infringement poisons the well.

mjl
>
> cheers,
>
> lkh

Michael Lush <mjlush@gmail.com> wrote:
> What with all the kerfuffle over on Reddit perhaps it is time for a Usenet revival...

I think NNTP is certainly much better than Reddit, anyways. No central
account is needed and no web browser is needed, and you do not need to
use their user interface (and many web pages have excessive animation
and inefficiency so it is slow and uses up too much memory and power);
with NNTP you can use your own, so it is much better.

Also note that you can set up your own server if wanted, and can also
make messages federated between servers if wanted too. However, the Big 8
and alt.* can also be used on existing servers (e.g. Eternal September),
so it is not always necessary to set up your own.

(I had sometimes read Reddit but not write anything there, because I think
that NNTP is much better. I have my own NNTP server set up, although it
is hardly used much so far.)

> I guess the moderation system A) needs someone at the wheel
> and B) needs an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century

I think often the moderation may be not needed so much, although sometimes
it might be helpful. I also think that many of the modern designs are no
good, so should not always use merely because they are modern.

What might be helpful is a standardized format for "global scoring".
Moderators can add global scores and other users can optionally install
the global scores or not; users can still add their own private scores
too if desired. This should be a simple format that does not need to use
modern more complicated stuff such as JSON, XML, HTML, JavaScripts, etc.
A simple plain ASCII text format would be better, I think.

When messages are being flooded in the server, then something more would
be helpful such as to block users and to delete articles; if such a thing
becomes common in some newsgroups then requiring an account registration
might be helpful. However, such as registration should be made to work
without a web browser (and especially without reCAPTCHA and JavaScripts
and CSS etc), if possible.

(I also think that Unicode is no good. There are other character sets if
you need them though (including TRON code), which can be helpful to write
in many other languages, but Unicode is no good.)

--
Don't laugh at the moon when it is day time in France.

Michael Lush <mjlush@gmail.com> writes:

> On Friday, June 16, 2023 at 9:10:17 PM UTC+1, Laurens Kils-Huetten wrote:
>> hm, I don't know, how much moderation do we need? This place has worked
>> without moderation for decades.
>
> If /r/rpg turn up en masse we will need moderation, those Green Card lawyers are still out there waiting to pounce

I've seen two kinds of spam on Usenet:

* Straight-up advertisements like you see elsewhere
* Obsessive lunatics who post the same 10000 word screed over and over
* again.

The latter is easy to killfile because they usually use the same
identity and frequently the same post titles over and over again.

The former, well, I see more nymshifting but the content is still pretty
repetitive and easy to match against.

With Usenet, you have both user-level (scoring/killfiles) and
server-level controls. At the server level, the admin can put various
filters in place and, perhaps more effective, just drop any articles
which originated at a bad server (I'm sorely tempted to just drop
anything originating at Google Groups, 99% of spam seems to come from
there).

Oh, and there's also NoCeM, although I've never used it
(http://www.cm.org/faq.html) it basically lets you subscribe to
third-party blocklists.

>> > and B) needs an overhaul to bring it into the 21st century
>> for me usenet works just fine the old school way. But thunderbird works
>> quite nicely and apparently there's a decent client for iOS:
>> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newstap-usenet-newsreader/id292410356
>
> I'm so worried about the client software, but j I'm willing to bet the server software is pretty vulnerable
> by modern standards. it used to be pretty easy to send out cancels to posts and newsgroups and things will really
> go down the drain when copyright infringement poisons the well.

You can send out cancels but I don't know that anybody actually honors
an un-signed cancel message these days.

I'm not sure what you mean about copyright infringement, either -- I
guess people could post sections of copyrighted modules etc.?

john

news@zzo38computer.org.invalid wrote:
> Michael Lush <mjlush@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What with all the kerfuffle over on Reddit perhaps it is time for a Usenet revival...
>
> I think NNTP is certainly much better than Reddit, anyways. No central
> account is needed and no web browser is needed, and you do not need to
> use their user interface (and many web pages have excessive animation
> and inefficiency so it is slow and uses up too much memory and power);
> with NNTP you can use your own, so it is much better.

I agree, apart from the technical side, I'm really tired of the marketing
aesthetic, that comes with almost any web site.

> [...]
>
> (I also think that Unicode is no good. There are other character sets if
> you need them though (including TRON code), which can be helpful to write
> in many other languages, but Unicode is no good.)

Hm, I don't think I agree. What's your grief with unicode?

Cheers,

lkh

Laurens Kils-Huetten, 2023-06-20 22:13:
> I agree, apart from the technical side, I'm really tired of the
> marketing aesthetic, that comes with almost any web site.

It's an interesting aspect: People feel compelled to reproduce the busy
websites because the corporate websites do it. And if you don't
reproduce, they feel alienated, or maybe just surprised, I don't know.
In any case, the visual similarity counts as a boon.

I keep posting about netnews and the austere web front-end I have for it
at <https://campaignwiki.org/news>, calling it a "forum" and saying that
people need to send me an email to "register", but there really is no
demand.

Alex Schroeder, 2023-06-21 20:49:
> ... but there really is no demand.

Oh, I think my last post to rec.games.frp.misc was 1998-06-01, about a
Fate game I had bought.
<https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.frp.misc/c/TKhdo2MDPig/m/vTjRUHJx
zQ8J>
Emacs tells me that was 9151 days ago. :)

Alex Schroeder <alex@alexschroeder.ch> wrote:
> Alex Schroeder, 2023-06-21 20:49:
>> ... but there really is no demand.
>
> Oh, I think my last post to rec.games.frp.misc was 1998-06-01, about a
> Fate game I had bought.
> <https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.frp.misc/c/TKhdo2MDPig/m/vTjRUHJx
> zQ8J>
> Emacs tells me that was 9151 days ago. :)

Amazing! Almost sounds like it was Fudge, though.

--
https://octodon.social/@lkh
IRC: lkh on Libera.chat and others
Discord: lkh#2319

Laurens Kils-Huetten <lkh@sdf-eu.org> writes:

>> Oh, I think my last post to rec.games.frp.misc was 1998-06-01, about a
>> Fate game I had bought.
>
> Amazing! Almost sounds like it was Fudge, though.

Gaah! It totally was. Fate was 2003.