
Usenet, updated in real time as it was thirty years ago - adambyrtek
http://olduse.net/
======
yaakov34
The nostalgia that this makes me feel is unbelievable. Some things about old
Usenet are probably lost forever:

1\. The feeling that "this matters". Usenet wasn't just one discussion forum
among millions, it was The One. 2\. The life of the mind - the all-text nature
of the old Usenet was somehow incredibly conductive to treating people as pure
intellects. "On Usenet, it doesn't matter if you're a dog." Somehow even
forums like HN don't capture that feeling today.

Also, a decent newsreader is still ahead of all modern browser-based software
by a mile when it comes to following many discussion threads. For me, nothing
today compares with trn.

Yeah, I know Usenet is still out there, and I can even be found there
sometimes, but it's not the same feeling anymore, not of intellectual wonder
and horizons and of being a pioneer. Probably, that's hard to explain to the
youngsters who weren't there - wow, the internet has produced its crop of old-
timers.

~~~
beej71
> Also, a decent newsreader is still ahead of all modern browser-based
> software by a mile when it comes to following many discussion threads. For
> me, nothing today compares with trn.

You're far from the only one who feels this way. I'm not quite sure why it is,
but I think it's because trn's tree is basically drawn "orthogonally" (if I
might use that word), with siblings stacked vertically, and children moving
off to the right.

A "normal" newsreader uses the standard indented list, which gives the whole
thread a "meandering set of diagonals" shape, and has a less strong visual
connection between siblings (which is an important connection, because they're
all replying to the same parent.)

So I was just looking for a screenshot of trn for people who didn't know what
it looked like, and I found this blog entry talking about exactly this (with
screenshot):

<http://cafbit.com/entry/the_lost_art_of_threaded>

~~~
yaakov34
Yeah, but it's by no means just that. I was thinking of the simplest things,
like messages you've read not showing up again (unless asked for), using a
single key to advance to the next message, pressing a key to mark a thread
read. The advanced threading and killfile features were great, of course, but
the web interface is just so fantastically less convenient for basic stuff -
it's unbelievable.

Imagine going to the HN front page, clicking on all the threads you're not
going to follow and marking them read or killed (meaning they don't show up
again), and then clicking on the threads you want brings you to the last
UNREAD messages in those threads. And you press space to go the next unread
message. Imagine all forums being like that.

Give me that, and I don't care if you give me a vertical or a horizontal tree
display (tho' I prefer the trn way). It seems so simple that I almost can't
believe I'm not missing something subtle.

~~~
btilly
The simple things that you're describing are all in gmail.

~~~
yaakov34
Have to disagree, even though I'm a big gmail user and I do like it way better
than the other webmail systems. A thread in gmail looks more like a pile than
a real thread - it's nowhere near as smooth as navigating in a newsreader. It
presents newer messages on top, and I sometimes find myself confused when I
can't tell if certain text is new or quoted in an old message.

And there is no "kill thread" - you can set up a filter, but that's a longish
operation and I don't think it lets you say "I don't want to follow this
particular discussion" as opposed to "filter out this subject/author".

It all comes down to gmail being a mail system, not a forum system. And goog's
forum system, groups, is pretty sad.

~~~
btilly
You should really read through
<http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594> to find out what
gmail does that you don't know it does. For instance the "kill thread"
functionality that you don't think exists is called mute and is available by
pressing _m_.

I stand by my previous comment. Every piece of basic functionality that was
requested is actually present in gmail. The aesthetics are not the same, and
some things require hitting two keys (for instance _y_ then _o_ to archive the
current message and move to the next - keeping the current one from showing up
again unless you look for it). But the basic functionality is all there.

~~~
_delirium
Is there a way to get gmail to highlight posts on mailing lists that are
replies to one of your own messages to the list? That's one of the main
features of newsreaders I miss (HN's threads?id= view is kind of a clunky
approximation).

~~~
btilly
Not reliably, but here is the best substitute that I am aware of.

Click on the icon at the top left, select Email Settings.

Search for _Personal level indicators_ and turn them on.

Save changes.

You'll now have indicators of which emails were sent to you personally, and a
stronger indicator of emails sent only to you. When people respond to you they
tend to reply to you, so it tends to work out reasonably well.

~~~
_delirium
That's pretty useful, thanks! It seems like they ought to be able to directly
mark messages which are reply to one of my messages via message-ids, but this
does catch the majority of them.

------
antirez
What's sad is that there is no serious replacement for usenet in the internet
of today. Usenet was a place where top talents of the world used to talk
together with amateurs on the more disparate topics. Back then the internet
was for an elite, and that sucked as universal access to the net is really
important, but at the same time it is sad to see most of the internet
reflecting the fact that today it is a "mass" thing.

~~~
beaumartinez
> _Usenet was a place where top talents of the world used to talk together
> with amateurs on the more disparate topics._

Twitter has adopted some of these functions: it allows anyone to hold open
conversations on any topic (albeit limited to 140 characters); enough
(important) people are on Twitter and use it with enough frequency to make
this possible.

~~~
cipherpunk
When I hear Twitter being compared to the golden age of Usenet, I reach for my
pistol.

Nothing of real substance fits into 140 characters. Which is unfortunate,
really, since Twitter is so popular these days.

~~~
joeyh
100% agree, but ironically the most read single post on olduse.net so far
actually fits in a tweet: <http://identi.ca/notice/75500867>

------
joeyh
Here's my announcement post, which is, I hope, worth reading for some context
of what's going on in 1981 "now":

<http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/announcing_olduse.net/>

Also, if you see a blank box where the newsreader should be, yeah, inviting
the whole web in to run tin on my server is not a completely scalable thing.
nntp.olduse.net is where it's at.

~~~
evangineer
joeyh's git repo for this neat hack:

<http://git.kitenet.net/?p=oldusenet.git;a=summary>

------
joeyh
This was just posted in the "hacknews" newsgroup. Its resemblance to my day is
uncanny.

    
    
      Message-ID: <696@Autzoo.UUCP>
      Newsgroups: hacknews
      Path: utzoo!henry
      Date: Fri Jun  5 15:44:20 1981
      Subject: morning crash
      From: henry
      X-OldUsenet-Modified: added From; converted from A-news;   fixed Message-ID; added
      Xref: dummy dummy:1
    
      Crash this morning, a mass of multiple panics suggesting 
      some sort of catasstrophic failure.  Hardware glitch?  
      Reboot and rebuild (by Laura) succeeded with no problems.

------
neilk
Updated in real time? So I have at least ten years before my embarassing
newbie posts arrive.

I want a fork of this that allows me to reply to me. ;)

------
Sniffnoy
This is before the Great Renaming, I don't even know the structure...

------
osswid
Wow...this is seriously cool. I like how the old threads are preserved in the
newsreader interface. There is also something about having the clock advance
in "realtime" that makes it more fun to run that just skimming through the old
archive.

Nice work Joey.

