🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Don" == Don Wallace <me@donwallace.com> writes:

  Don> I agree with your analysis of usenet (arcane and buried) versus
  Don> web based discussions (open.)

This is amazing -- it's exactly *backward*.

Usenet is everywhere.  No ISP with a clue would dare offer Internet
access without including Usenet.  Web-based discussions are exactly
wrong, because:
 o Clients aren't available to present what's there in any sort of
   useful way.
 o Everything is server-side, thus effectively killing any control
   that the client has over presentation beyond basics like colors and
   fonts.
 o There is only _one_ server, a single point of failure for the
   entire system.  If the server goes down, if the network gets
   flooded, if the upstream cable gets cut, or any one of a huge list
   of other things happen, you're finished.  Usenet works on the model
   that each site has its own server; large sites have different
   servers for different groups.  Thus, it's always there.  If one
   site has a blowout, only those folks are affected, and everything
   will spool for them in the meantime.
 o It's extremely inconvenient to go through the rigamarole of moving
   your web browser over to some site, navigating through whatever
   nonsense is there that stands in the way of the discussion.
 o There is no good way to compose what you're writing.  Formatting is
   almost completely lost beyond basic paragraph breaks.  How does one
   invoke a spellchecker?
 o There is no useful way to control what you see.  How do you prevent
   seeing articles from people whom you find annoying?  How do you
   kill threads that you don't want to see anymore?  There are NO
   mechanisms for this sort of thing beyond what the moderator or the
   host of the site will and will not allow.  That means if the signal
   to noise ratio gets bad, you have no hope of being able to find the
   signal among the noise.  You just have to leave.  One man's signal
   is another's noise.  Thus, on another level, web-based discussions
   do not scale.

I agree with your other observations about the utility of Usenet, but
I think that the primary advantages are technical: stability and
utility.  That it is better established is irrelevant, except to point
out that the Web offers no advantage in terms of accessibility.

-- 
Matt Curtin cmcurtin@interhack.net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/