I’m not asking about how it is used for warez, since that is what it mostly hosting at this point… Nor am I asking why anyone should or should not start a community on USENET (many reasons why you wouldn’t/couldn’t).

Instead, I am asking why someone would only decide to engage with the textual, traditional, conversational aspects of USENET over modern tools like lemmy?

I could name a few I suppose:

  • Relative anonymity
  • Access to a large amount of history
  • Nostalgia
  • Communication with those who still frequent newsgroups

I don’t know how many more there are but I would like to hear your guys’ opinions in regards to those listed above and any others I may have missed.

    • dontgogettingtooclever@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      13 days ago

      This may it sound like a silly question but what kind of high quality conversations? It’s been so long since I’ve used USENET. I’m not even sure how you connect with conversations on there.

      • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        I remember talking to real experts in programming and C++. Hacker News used to be like that, but they became stupid with AI.

        • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          12 days ago

          Back in the before time, I was having a problem getting a new ethernet card working in Linux. I posted a question in USENET, and got a reply from the guy who wrote the driver for the NIC. I supplied the info he asked for and he got the driver working for the new NIC.

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
    1·
    11 days ago

    Usenet is more or less dead. From thousands of servers to just a couple of free real Usenet servers and 60 or so corporate ones.

    Its nice that there are a couple of free text only ones left, but the days of all universities and ISPs and anyone else sharing are long gone.

      • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
        01·
        11 days ago

        I don’t use it. I have not used the terminal much except for specific admin type commands and running scripts since the teens started. I really was trying to look for terminal things that could funtion like a gui. in particular email. I wanted the calendar function. I finally gave up and accepted gui as the main interface.