
Ask HN: Do you still use/like Usenet/NNTP? - znpy
Hi!<p>As of subject: do you still hang on &quot;newsgroups&quot; ?<p>I see some &quot;winning points&quot; in newsgroups, namely:<p>- Text based
- cross-platform
- distribuited system
- possible to set-up custom systems<p>I was wondering what HNers think about NNTP.
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rprospero
Oddly enough, I'm heavily into NNTP, but not much into the Usenet.
Specifically, I use gwene.org, which is a bridge between RSS and NNTP, to keep
up on all my feeds. I've found using a newsreader easier than any feed readers
that I've tried.

Since I am regularly loading up a newsreader, I do occasionally decide to try
and get into the actual Usenet, but I have yet to find a group that was both
about a topic that interests me and had more contributors than spammers.

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brudgers
A few years ago my beloved taught online for University of Phoenix. At that
time, NNTP was used for the classroom. My impression is that it is great for
irregular long-form asynchronous shared communication.

The downside was that NNTP readers are increasingly a corner case and even
though Outlook had support, it was a bit of a PITA to configure it properly.

My personal take is that it's an underutilized protocol. Which is not to
suggest that I miss the Usenet. People behaved badly as a general rule.

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ksherlock
I still check in on a couple newsgroups. Most activity has moved to web-based
forums but on the other hand, so has most of the spam.

There was a time when the best (or only) way to find how to do something in
TeX/LaTeX was to search google group's comp.text.tex archives. However google
groups got worse and tex.stackexchange now exists.

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Tomte
It was good, great even, while it lasted.

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znpy
Could you elaborate on that ?

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allenbrunson
What is there to say that hasn't already been said?

At one time, I was so invested in USENET that I wrote a client app for it, on
two different operating systems (BeOS and Mac OS X). These days I make no use
of it at all, and I haven't for years.

USENET was designed for a simpler, more naive period. It has no defense
against spammers and trolls, and no way to establish a firm identity that
can't be spoofed. It just doesn't work in today's internet.

