On 2/9/23 20:35, worm food wrote:
What is old is new again. Depending on one's perspective, [text-based]
Usenet is either a wasteland or a frontier, like Chernobyl, an abandoned landfill, or Detroit. We are all mutants now and can handle the radiation.
Sure, you could ask, "why bother? everyone moved to Reddit." So what? If
I cared what the average joe had to say about a topic, I would certainly
go to Reddit. I am, however, interested in mutants.
Let's discuss how to rehabilitate a few corners of this vast expanse for
our own amusement.
More to the point, how does one become a moderator for one of these many abandoned groups?
I've been thinking about this lately. With sites like Eternal September,
and the moves that Twitter, Reddit, and the other big social networks
are making, the time is ripe for a Usenet comeback.
As I see it, Usenet has two huge problems, and a few smaller ones. The
two big problems are pretty related, but have separate causes. The
biggest problem is a lack of moderation, like you mentioned. The answer
for becoming a moderator on any of the Big 8 hierarchies is to submit an
RFD to *I think* news.groups. Get enough support, and then bring in the B8MB.[1]
But if the newsgroup is unmoderated, I think it's a lost cause.
`Changing a group from unmoderated to moderated is "strongly
discouraged" - which, in practice, means "practically impossible."' [2] Personally, I think this is a mistake on the part of the Big 8
Management Board, and a relic of the days before the Eternal September. Moderation is sorely needed now, and I think you'll have trouble
attracting new users when a majority of newsgroups of interest are taken
over by bots and spammers.
The second big problem (As I see it) that Usenet has is that it's a
haven of hate speech.[3] Now, I'm not saying it should be the place of
Usenet to regulate speech, I'm just saying that a newsgroup like
misc.education should not be packed full of racial slurs, and unhinged ramblings.
The smaller problems could be fixed by a good client, but I'm not sure
exactly how that would look, so I'm just going to post the problems as I
see them. These aren't ranked in order of importance, just in order that
I've thought of them.
The first is discoverability. In the Big 8, we have the periodic list of newsgroups posted to news.announce.newgroups, which is great! You get
the groups' names, and a description of what they're about, and whether
or not they're moderated. But there's no mention of how active they are,
so you have to subscribe to the list to know. I think this could be as
easy as adding a Last Post column, or a Posts in Last Month column, to
the list. Of course, without effective moderation, it's impossible to
know if those posts are related to the topic, or just trying to sell drugs.
But in other hierarchies, I know of no such list. I don't know if such a
thing is even possible or makes sense. I think the only realistic way is
to get a list from your news server, but on mine, at least, this list is enormous. And, at least in Thunderbird, I don't see a description or
moderation status. I don't know if those exist on the news server or not.
Which leads me into the next small problem: The clients are simply not
great for general users. Thunderbird is amazing, and I use it as my main newsreader, and email client, but for reading the Usenet, it's simply
not amazing. The core devs for Thunderbird are mostly focused on email,
and I would not be surprised if Usenet support eventually went away.
Similarly, other email clients that support news are focusing mostly on
email, while the news reader bits stagnate.
Similarly, dedicated news reader software seems very stuck in the past.
In fairness, the core of how Usenet works has not changed in many years,
so why should the clients change so much? But when compared to modern
social media apps, Usenet is jarring, so if we want to attract new users
(and keep Usenet from becoming a wasteland) there is a need for apps
that function more in the way kids today expect a communication app to function.
Relatedly, as far as I know, there isn't an app that syncs read status
between multiple devices (Aside from Google Groups, but that has its own problems). Keep in mind: I know not everybody wants this, especially
since it would likely require some third party server, but plenty of
people want to access their media on multiple devices. I think this is
another symptom of news readers being stuck in the past, in bygone days
when a person would dial into a BBS, or connect to their university's
mainframe to read the Usenet.
So, what are the options, and what are the answers? Well... I don't
know. I'm fairly new to Usenet myself, and I'm not sure it's my place to suggest sweeping changes. But I can tell you my experiences getting
around. It's been tough. Seeing a newsgroup that seems interesting, then finding that it's nothing but spam is disheartening. Finding interesting newsgroups full of hate speech is frankly off-putting. Perhaps a
coalition of highly motivated advocates could convince the B8MB to
change some of it's opinions. Perhaps a semi-skilled programmer could
create a Reddit-style web interface for Usenet.
Oh, and an easy to find FAQ on getting started wouldn't hurt, either.
[1]
https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderator_Vacancy_Investigations
[2]
https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Changing_the_Moderation_Status_of_Existing_Groups [3] I am not interested in your opinion of free speech.
--
~rdh
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