Another Nail In Usenet's Coffin?

Karamchand writes "Today news.individual.net in an email to its more than 250.000 registered users announced that they won't be able to continue offering free Usenet access. While it provided text-only groups many people relied on individual.net's service to take part in one of the Internet's older services. In a time were a working news server is not a selling point for ISPs and most internet users never heard about this service, will this be another nail in the coffin of Usenet?"

Death of Usenet predicted! Film at 11.

[winkydink]

I've been hearing this, since, oh, just after The Great Renaming, which was when? '85, '86?

No.

[Trillan]

Those who like it, like it a lot. Enough, say, to find another Usenet feed. It just ain't that big a deal.

At the moment, I'm using the google groups beta. If they'd add reply quoted, I'd probably stick with it. As it is, I'll probably get an account with supernews or something sooner or later...

Why be so dramatic?

[Ckwop]

Usenet will be here for another 20 years.. These stories about the "death" of these things are hugely over-rated.

Next it'll be that AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN messenger are killing IRC.

There are plenty of good groups on usenet with loyal posters - it's like trying to kill fortran - it'll only happen over dead bodies..

Simon.

Hasn't Usenet been about to die for years, but...

[whoever57]

there are more newsgroups than ever. This is just one free service. There are still other free services -- just because one company can't compete does not mean the medium is dying.

If Usenet falls...

[brucifer]

...and no one is around to hear it, will anyone care?

its been dead

[Suburbanpride]

I've been using the internet since 1994 (well, 193 is you count comp-u-serve) and I remember Usenet fondly. It was a great source of information and discussion, but the signal to noise ratio got way to high. By 1999 it was eaiser to do a HotBot search to find relavent information than it was in the spam and troll infested usenet, save for a few good groups. I really doubt that anyone who got online in '97 or later ever used the usenet at all.

Valued Service

[DrKyle]

As long as there are people using usenet to download movies, music, tv shows, games, applications, ebooks, and just about anything else that can be posted on usenet, there will be companies willing to let us pay for that access. Maybe you won't be able to get it bundled with your ISP anymore, but I for one will always have a use for it.

Ouch

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ooo, this hurts. I've used this service for years to read news. Used to be, your ISP would provide a news server the same way that it provides a mail server, web server, etc. Then binaries groups became highly popular, and the cost of a news server skyrocketed. This was seen as an outsourcable expense.

Well, what's next? You used to be able to take for granted there were public news servers out there. This service was the best one, and only offered text groups, which was all I wanted anyway. Now...I don't know. There's just no beating reading real submariners discuss the USS San Francisco (hit an underwater mountain at full speed recently) on sci.military.naval.

Re:Finding web forums

[arose]

Web based forum software offer a lot more features than newsgroups.

Like "reading trough a web browser", "no threads" and "you remember what you have read, not your computer"?

Re:Google Groups

[Old Wolf]

Google groups, fine? What planet are you on.

It's beyond me how they can't hire a programmer who knows how to make the text that the poster types, appear without being mangled! (newlines inserted, newlines deleted, lines of the new post interpreted as quoted text from the old...

Also it's annoying to see a reply listed in the tree view as the parent of the post that it's replying to, or a reply listed as a child of a previous reply to the same parent.

Not to mention the un-intuitive user interface which encourages posting without quoting the parent.

Re:Google Groups

[Another MacHack]

It got worse when they went into their new beta. In thread listing mode, I can't find a way to jump to the next ten posts without scrolling through the left-hand pane to find the right one to click on.

How is this a nail in coffin?

[StarWynd]

Okay, so people are now going to have to pay for a service that was once free. How is this a nail in the coffin? It seemed that Usenet was dying out until Google came along and included it via Google Groups.

Even though I knew Usenet was out there, it really wasn't until Google Groups that I started using it heavily. I'm a casual Usenet user with a post here and a post there, but most of the time I just don't want all the traffic filling up my mailbox. Having it online in a nice form and easily searchable has made it much easier to work with and find exactly what you need and it's now much more available to folks who never knew it existed in the first place. (What's this little Groups link over here? ...)

One free provider not being free any more doesn't change anything all that much other than being an inconvience for certain users.

Maybe it's a good thing

[bonch]

Maybe the best thing for Usenet is to go "underground," so to speak, and have traffic die so the noise level diminishes, and at least a little bit of the former glory might return.

Re:Finding web forums

[Phurd Phlegm]

Web based forum software offer a lot more features than newsgroups.

Yeah, like you can attach cute smileys to your posts.

Well, I guess that's the only clear advantage I've ever seen. Maybe after sixteen years on USENET I'm just set in my ways, but with careful kill file management, you can still find interesting stuff to read and interesting people to interact with.

It has not escaped my notice that Slashdot is a web-based forum. I can't really say that it offers "a lot more features than newsgroups." The only extra feature it offers is moderation, which on USENET is done on an individual (or I should say in-duh-vidual) basis. That way, I make my own decisions about who to ignore, instead of relying on possibly-biased moderators. Not necessarily better, just different.

Re:Google Groups

[nocomment]

That's not even the worst part, the fact it takes 12 hours for what you say to show up, and by then you have gotten 30 replies. and the thread is dead. It's fine for the 3 times a year I use usenet.

You really think Usenet is dying? Anyone got the link to netcraft?[tt]

Re:Google Groups

[ari_j]

I have to disagree. Google Groups is great for reading anything over a week old, but for keeping up-to-date or having any kind of discussion, it is abysmal at best. What took me less than 24 hours when I had Cox cable internet with Usenet access in Phoenix can take upwards of two weeks using Google Groups.

But it is phenomenal for read-only access to things a week or more old, and by "or more" I mean back to the Pleistocene era.

It's only 10 EUR a year!

[stesch]

Hey, what's all the fuss about? It's only 10 EUR a year. That's 0.84 EUR a month, 0.18 EUR a week, or 0.03 EUR a day.

Or maybe you just use the newsserver of your ISP. Some people have forgotten that there are still ISPs who care about Usenet.

With a negative SNR, what's the point?

[shanen]

Actually, the newsgroups died quite a while ago. I think the historians of epistemology will eventually date it either to the first time the average SNR went negative, or perhaps the last time it touched positive territory. Trivial distinction.

It's not just that the information content has become quite low, but that there is as much disinformation as actual positive content. Add in all the pure noise and various forms of spam, add in a little creamed troll (and I think all trolls should be pureed), and you have a pretty worthless thing.

Since so much of the negative information is political propaganda, my guess would be that the SNR hits the deepest troughs during elections, and in combination with the arrival of perpetual September, I'd guess the first time the average SNR went negative was probably in 1996 or 1998, but without doubt it was dead by 2000, whichever metric you care to use. (Two main metrics would be number of posts or volume.) I suspect it is already in permanent negative SNR territory, though there are still tiny pockets of actual information scattered hither and yon.

Why? I think abuse of anonymity is probably the single largest killer.

Re:Google Groups

[bob beta]

for text usenet group access, Google Groups is fine.

Okay, then. What's the name of their NNTP server. Will I need a logon to post?

Don't feed me their pretty 'web' interface. It's gotten more and more a convoluted mess over the years since DejaNews started.

Re:Google Groups

[smchris]

Agreed. Google is "ask the genie". But usenet is where you have a serious ongoing conversation.

I guess it depends on the ISPs target market and your needs. I would never use an ISP without usenet and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone with a tech interest in particular.

But for the cheapie ISPs? Grandma wants web and mail for $6/month? How is an ISP going to do that and be full service? Doubly smart for cheapie ISPs in poor "red state" markets. Porn? Never! Not on our servers, praise Jesus!

If usenet died, that would be one thing. But I don't have any problem with multi-tier marketing of ISPs.

Wait, didn't AOL kill it?

[JudasBlue]

Funny, I remember when everyone was on about too many people on usenet were destroying it: The great AOL newbie flood.

Now too many people are killing it?

Hell, strikes me it is just getting back to normal.

Re:With a negative SNR, what's the point?

[LihTox]

Actually, the newsgroups died quite a while ago. I think the historians of epistemology will eventually date it either to the first time the average SNR went negative, or perhaps the last time it touched positive territory. Trivial distinction.

People keep talking about this small signal-to-noise ratio, but it all depends on the group. There are some groups with huge numbers of on-topic posts and very little spam (which, by the way, is fairly easy to filter out; do web forums have killfiles?) The problem with the groups I like is there is too much content. There are also a lot of ghetto groups which have been abandoned, but where it works, it works well.

I can only imagine you've been hanging out on the seedier side of Usenet....

Re:Ouch

[DeepHurtn!]

The fact that usenet is so decentralised is my favourite thing about it. Webforums, for example, are entirely under the control of a single entity (whether an individual or a company), and the forum is at that individual's mercy. They can pull the plug (or get hacked, or exceed their bandwidth, or...) anytime. Try to take out a newsgroup, though! You'd have to find every jackass running a usenet server and whack the box with a baseball bat.

Re:What an eye roller...

[antoy]

Good to see that other people understand how powerful Usenet can be today. Weird technical problems that sound to rare to be documented? You'll find a solution. A good discussion on C++/AI/whatever? You'll find one, or a couple hundred. If this is a dead medium, then show me a real replacement of such size, depth and convenience.

Re:Finding web forums

[dougmc]

On the contrary, it tends to encourage discussions to stay on track and keeps outdated posts from being brought up over and over again.

Who are you to decide when a post is outdated? If people want to bring it up again, they should.

As for staying `on track', the only reason web forums stay `on track' is because the moderators will usually smack you down if you don't. (A double edged sword, more on that later.)

Click the "See New Posts" icon.

Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. Also, none of these options that you list work *at all* unless you actually register with the site and log in.

Click the "Ignore" button.

Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different. And often this option isn't available unless you pay for an account (more on that later.)

Click the "Disable Emoticons" checkbox.

Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. Every one is different ...

The administrator can disable images.

Assuming that this particular software has it, and it works as you expect. And assuming that the administrator has actually done this -- it doesn't seem to happen very often.

Most of them provide attachment capabilities, if enabled by the administrator.

Most is a stretch. Some is probably more accurate. And generally they don't offer you that unless you actually pay them for an account. Which makes sense, as images do suck up the bandwidth.

Paying for an account to get access to the features that Usenet has given me for decades is even worse. I wouldn't mind paying $5/month or so, but that $5/month only covers one board. Alas, I don't just follow one group in Usenet, but instead a few dozen. If these all moved to web forums, that would be probably be like $100/month just for some of the functionality I have now with Usenet.

Honestly, this is just a pure troll.

No, I don't think your (you = sploo22) post is pure troll. You've brought up some useful points, but it seems that maybe you just haven't gotten used to a good Usenet newsreader, or have forgotten how functional they are ...

I can add to the list of web forum deficiencies as well :

It's not easy to run a spell checker. Perhaps they offer some java one, but what if you don't let your browser run java? And every forum is different ...

(For example, I suspect I mispelled deficiencies. I before E, except after C?) I could grep /usr/dict/words for it, but I think I'll just write this paragraph instead.)

I guess I could type my post up in emacs, run my spell checker, then post it to the forum ...

How do you save a thread to your disk? Make a bookmark? That might work for a week or two, but sooner or later, the forum will get upgraded, or moved, or shut down, or the content will be expired -- and the link you saved is dead. Same goes for trying to keep a record of everything you've posted. With Usenet, it's trivial.

Suppose you recall seeing something on a forum a year ago. But don't recall exactly where. How will you find it? It's probably expired off the forum, if the forum still exists at all. If so, google probably won't find it. The Internet Archive might have a copy, but that's iffy. With Usenet, you just hit google and enter some phrases and you'll probably find it quickly enough.

Suppose the forum administrator doesn't like you or your views. So he deletes your posts, or worse -- edits them. And there's nothing you can do about it but go somewhere else. Perhaps open your own competing forum?

Of course, I'm typing this into a web forum now. (In

Use it all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually connect to usenet 3 or 4 times per week. Huge amount of information there. The groups are a better source of information than any other part of the internet (in many ways). Getting rid of usenet would reduce the internet (usenet performs functions that no other area of the internet can). Getting rid of it would be no better than getting rid of email. Sure it might be polluted with garbage too, but would you like to go back to licking stamps?

Re:Hasn't Usenet been about to die for years, but.

[arose]

The problem is that you have to sign up with Firstgate to be able to pay.

Re:More ISPs *SHOULD* Charge For USENET...

[Dogtanian]

IF *ALL* companies charged for usenet, maybe ther would be less USENET SPAM.

I thought this was insightful for about 5 seconds, then realised that spammers would do exactly what they've done with mail servers (especially since any accounts they paid for would get closed immediately after they violated the TOS by spamming).