From Newsgroup: alt.culture.usenet

On 2025-04-11, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.culture.usenet.]
On 2025-03-22, yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) wrote:

"One reason to sign up for a shell account is that shell providers
often have friendly user communities.

(*) Most neighbours I have in pubnixens are just silent, but the few
that are not are worth staying.

I signed up to one or two, and that was my experience. The *idea* was
cool, but no one was really there. The fundamental problem, I think, is
its not a real community. Its people who want to use a particular technology, but don't share any other interest. It's like starting a
group for people who like to meet in community centres. Once you're
there, then what? You've already achieved your goal? The Gemini
community had the same problem. They just liked the idea of using
Gemini. That doesn't make what you have to say more interesting.

It was basically, at least to me, people who liked to use a particular
means to an ends, but actually had no ends. I do understand that the communication format does matter (part of the appeal of Usenet to me),
but you need more than a shared desire to use the same format. At least
on Usenet, you can find others with similar interests.

Many providers have their own IRC, Usenet, or bulletin boards where
users can exchange messages.

...plus fediverse, too many different link aggregators and short message
like media, local or pubnix network wide bulletin boards, Gitea and Cgit
... short: Too many services competing for users. That yields lots of
sub-crowds with far to few comminication.

The too many services trap.

These technologies can be useful for closed groups. NNTP could be used
for a company, like group email and centralised posting. IRC useful as
well. I can see the need, and value for a private community, which may
be large to do that (such as a social movement). But we don't need more general "public" twitter clones.

The users tend to be other Linux and Unix enthusiasts. These spaces
are just fun to hang out in."

See (*).

I'd be interested to see these fun places.

NNTP used to be something used internally in tech companies as an
alternative to ticketing/bugzilla systems. If you set your newsreader
to fetch everything, NNTP was much better than anything else, you got
insta search and threading by default by using far less resources.
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