I know well enough what Usenet is. Hell, I AM the moderator in chile.grupos.anuncios (a local equivalent to news.announce.newgroups).
But to say Usenet is *far* from its glory days is a terrible understatement. Usenet is, for its glory days purposes, pretty much dead. Not many servers remain, not many users remain, entire hierarchies are dead. BESIDES some specific still-running newsgroups, not much activity remains.
Those isolated pockets of still healthy Usenet traffic are now no different than just any other web forum.
Usenet WAS the go-to place for online discussion. As much as it pains me, that ceased to be the case.