Requiem for Usenet

xoip writes "Jack Kapica at The Globe and Mail reports that '[Canadian ISP] Rogers is removing [Usenet] service without changing its rates, suggesting subscribers turn to portal technology controlled by Rogers/Yahoo, or to subscribe to an outside Usenet service -- at extra cost.'" From the article: "Aside from being based on the written word, which many game-playing kids would rather not make the effort to compose, Usenet is deeply flawed. Its democratic dream offers no defence against viruses, spammers, criminals, hucksters or deranged individuals. Rummaging about in Usenet is like slumming through the tenderloin district during the plague years -- your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place."

Comments

The way

[suso]

your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place.

Most of the time when I'm using usenet, I'm not looking for something. I am looking to get hit with random content like what other people think is good or interesting. Its fun to explore the mp3 newsgroups and just download some random mp3s and learn about new music.

Re:Bull

[MrBandersnatch]

"Usenet is not as big as it was, but it's still a great resource for information."

Actually, its bigger than even given that average daily traffic has grown from 4.6GB in 1996, to 2TB today! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet)

The good old days

[Billosaur]

I first used USENET in 1985 and I was frankly astounded. It was like having a club, but instead of being local it was world-wide. The topics were so numerous and the opinions so wide-ranging. I began to think it would be the start of some kind of global democracy, where everybody got to have a say.

But even then the signs were there. My first introduction to a flame-war was quite unintentional for a neophyte, but I quickly learned this was more like the Wild West than High Tech. You could have your fair share on intelligent discourse but there were many traps for the unwary and pretty soon you were being bombarded from all sides. It wasn't spam back then, but it was the idea. You learned to give out minimal information and never gave out your email address to anyone you didn't think you could trust.

The came the Web and suddenly everyone and his uncle who could afford an Internet connection could join in and USENET lost its quiet charm. Anyone who used it for a while got annoyed at the same questions being asked 1000's of times and the FAQs became a joke because no newbie would bother reading them. Sanity only seemed to be maintained in the moderated groups, but it was lawless fun in the alt.* groups. Pretty soon they were being overrun by the first generation of spammers and at that point I got out.

They say you can't go home again. True, but it seems the spirit of USENET lives on anyway, in places like Slashdot, and the Internet as a whole. When you think about, blogging is nothing more than having your own moderated newsgroup, and any website can become a focal point for discussion and dissemination of information to the like-minded. USENET is far from dead, but its legacy is well established, and a few of us hope that its spirit never truly dies.

Re:So...

[MightyMartian]

I've been hearing "Usenet is dead" for about six or seven years now. It's this oft-repeated bit of nonsense, sometimes used by ISPs justifying why they're cutting their Usenet feed, and sometimes by people who, for some odd reason, think that web forums are superior.

I first accessed Usenet from a BBS in 1992, and got my own small UUCP of my favorite groups a year later. I'm still a regular on some Usenet forums, and paid my thirteen bucks to the German individual.net. Not the greatest retention, but carries all the groups I care about. Groups like talk.origins are as busy as ever, with damn little spam. The groups that seem to be dead or dying are mainly the vanity groups like alt.barney.die.die.die.

Re:Oh come on

[Hosiah]

I thought the creationist mob were blockheaded... then I went to sci.physics and met the relativity deniers. Wow.

Both of whom are rather eclipsed by what I've come to call the "devolutionists", that is, the anti-learning, book-burning, everything-bashing clods, a few of whom infest /. Devolutionists (wait, it'll catch on) insist that there should be NO learning, that everything is TOO hard (no, you can't make it easier: those breath strips that dissolve on your toungue are too hard.), and that I'm a bad person just because I LEARNED and believe that OTHERS CAN LEARN, TOO. Devolutionists resent all advancement of the human race since the Dark Ages, and can't wait to get back so they can curl up in their safe little manure pile. No kidding!

history, not vision

[PMuse]

from TFA: Its democratic dream offers . . .
It's a democratic reality.