On 8/14/22 2:13 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 18:00:58 +0100
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:
>>> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> People did make an informed choice. When alternatives to Usenet
>>>> appeared they started to abandon Usenet.
>>>
>>> Decades ago it might have been the case that anyone who went online
>>> also learned about usenet. This no longer applies (apparently , there
>>> are even people who don't realise that being on facebook counts as
>>> being on the internet. But presumably such people wouldn't be a good
>>> match for usenet anyway) so it would be good that people *now* knew
>>> about usenet and its capabilities and made a choice. I cannot
>>> absolutely exclude that they do know and have made a choice but ,
>>> based on some comments I have seen from people who post through
>>> googlegroups , there are people who don't have a clear picture.
>>
>> Obviously I meant that the people _who were on Usenet_ made an informed
>> choice. But unless you think people have fundamentally changed in the
>> last couple of decades there’s no reason to think the outcome would be
>> any different if today’s Internet population were introduced to Usenet.
>
> What has certainly changed in the last 2 decades is the population of the
> planet which has gone up (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population :
> 6,143,494,000 in 2000 , 7,795,000,000 in 2020) and the percentage of that
> population who have internet access. I imagine (but can't be bothered to
> search for statistics) that that percentage has also gone up due to
> technological and economic development. So there are a lot more potential
> usenet users.
>
> Beyond that , where one decides to conduct one's discussion , especially
> political discussion , is among other things a political decision. In the
> last few years there have been many complaints , justified or not , that a
> few social media big players have too much control over which political
> opinions get heard. So the conditions are ripe for people to use a much
> more decentralised medium for online discussion. Usenet is here and it
> is technologically mature.
>
>> I think you’re just in denial about Usenet going the way of telegrams
>> and fax. Sometimes the world moves on.
>
> We'll see.
>

I still have a FAX, and it has its uses. So does usenet.

But you can't really post pix of your lunch or that
weird looking toenail looking for a minute of nano-fame
and cheers - so, for 99%, it's useless. IMHO, it's better
if the shallow-water people DON'T know about usenet or any
similar options. Keep them occupied with cat videos.

Usenet is basically what used to be called a "BBS" - but
one that nobody owns. I'd like to see people hosting it
to ECHO it on a standard web page on the same server.
Doesn't have to be fancy at all, just functional.

Hey, you can (I have) run a simple web page on a damned
ARDUINO UNO ... so it's not like it'd put a strain on
anybody's decacore i9 box. The idea is to not rely on
an odd port number ISPs/govts can trivially cut off off,
micromanage or charge money for.

On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 12:14:45 -0400
"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
> On 8/14/22 2:13 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> > On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 18:00:58 +0100
> > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

[...]

> >> I think you’re just in denial about Usenet going the way of telegrams
> >> and fax. Sometimes the world moves on.
> >
> > We'll see.
> >
>
> I still have a FAX, and it has its uses. So does usenet.

To give another technological example , several years ago vinyl records
looked like they were on their way out. But they're making a comeback.
Such things are fashion up to a point and fashions are unpredictable.

> But you can't really post pix of your lunch or that
> weird looking toenail looking for a minute of nano-fame
> and cheers - so, for 99%, it's useless. IMHO, it's better
> if the shallow-water people DON'T know about usenet or any
> similar options. Keep them occupied with cat videos.

One can both be interested in shallow stuff and deeper stuff. By all means
let people have twitter for light stuff including 1 sentence comments.

> Usenet is basically what used to be called a "BBS" - but
> one that nobody owns. I'd like to see people hosting it
> to ECHO it on a standard web page on the same server.
> Doesn't have to be fancy at all, just functional.
>
> Hey, you can (I have) run a simple web page on a damned
> ARDUINO UNO ... so it's not like it'd put a strain on
> anybody's decacore i9 box.

Or indeed running a newsserver.

> The idea is to not rely on
> an odd port number ISPs/govts can trivially cut off off,
> micromanage or charge money for.

--
Every theatre is an insane asylum, but an opera theatre is the
ward for the incurables.
Franz Schalk

On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> comp.misc has no moderation, but being a Usenet group, the server is allowed
> to carry it because they are not abusive. Carrying Usenet groups (unlike
> altnet groups) is a privilege and not a right.

You've lost me completely here. Which server ? And privilege for who ? Anyone
can install newsserver software and run it.

> >> Usenet (and to a much greater extent altnet)
> >> tend toward the latter, which is why we still can't get rid of
> >> alt.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner thirty years after Carasso mkgrouped it.
> >
> >What's altnet ? Googling did not give me a definite answer.
>
> Okay, there are basically three kinds of newsgroups. There are Usenet groups,
> which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed
> by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and
> removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before
> a cmesg newgroup is issued.

So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count
as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have
encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers
have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient.

> Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too
> restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much
> impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for
> alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups.

But there is still a process , see
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide .

> For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because
> of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very
> enlightening example.

I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several
alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much
the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is
a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond).

> The third kind of groups are local or regional groups, like mit.general or
> dc.dining, which are managed by a single admin or a small number of admins
> and which don't have wide propagation.

In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about
uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ?

> >I've never used newsserver software but I assume that it tends to have some
> >configuration file and , based on the content , the server carries whichever
> >groups. Is it more complicated than this ? If not then can't any server
> >operator who wants to get rid of some newsgroup simply edit the file and
> >that's all there is to it ?
>
> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
> been performed.

Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops
carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how
is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It
won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc
messages with server A.

> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
> mechanisms.

Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example
ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ?

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide/ :
* How do alt groups get created?
Like any group in Usenet, a group gets created (typically) when
someone sends out a special "control" message to "newgroup" it.
This is injected into the news system mostly like any other
article that you read, except it has special syntax. Different
sites on the net behave differently when one of these messages
arrives. The news software has various ways of acting
automatically on the message based on who sent it, and what
hierarchy the group to be created is in (alt in our case). With
respect to alt, some sites will automatically honor any "newgroup"
control message it sees, and some will mail the message to the
news admin who will make the decision to carry the group or not.

Who are these people who have tried and in what way did they try ?

[...]

> Altnet is not Usenet. Many sites that carry Usenet do not carry Altnet.
> You may wish to read some of the discussion in news.admin.newusers.

news.admin.newusers is empty on news.aioe.org and on
news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de .From when is the most recent message you
see on the newsserver you are using ?

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 18:58:14 -0000 (UTC)
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000
> kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> > For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because
> > of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very
> > enlightening example.
>
> I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several
> alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much
> the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is
> a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond).

How could I forget ? There is also alt.folklore.computers which is
excellent.

On 8/16/22 2:15 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 12:14:45 -0400
> "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>> On 8/14/22 2:13 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>>> On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 18:00:58 +0100
>>> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>>> I think you’re just in denial about Usenet going the way of telegrams
>>>> and fax. Sometimes the world moves on.
>>>
>>> We'll see.
>>>
>>
>> I still have a FAX, and it has its uses. So does usenet.
>
> To give another technological example , several years ago vinyl records
> looked like they were on their way out. But they're making a comeback.
> Such things are fashion up to a point and fashions are unpredictable.
>
>> But you can't really post pix of your lunch or that
>> weird looking toenail looking for a minute of nano-fame
>> and cheers - so, for 99%, it's useless. IMHO, it's better
>> if the shallow-water people DON'T know about usenet or any
>> similar options. Keep them occupied with cat videos.
>
> One can both be interested in shallow stuff and deeper stuff. By all
means
> let people have twitter for light stuff including 1 sentence comments.

Remember the purpose of NewSpeak ... to so dumb-down and
abbreviate language and thus ideas that it would be impossible
to organize a rebellion, or even the complex thoughts to
understand that there might be a reason for one. The word
itself might be obsoleted. No more "Common Sense", no
more DeclarationsVE ..... just frenetic postings of lunch
menus and cute kittens forever.

I would rather have the Twits NOT discover Usenet. Won't
prevent them, but won't help them either.

>> Usenet is basically what used to be called a "BBS" - but
>> one that nobody owns. I'd like to see people hosting it
>> to ECHO it on a standard web page on the same server.
>> Doesn't have to be fancy at all, just functional.
>>
>> Hey, you can (I have) run a simple web page on a damned
>> ARDUINO UNO ... so it's not like it'd put a strain on
>> anybody's decacore i9 box.
>
> Or indeed running a newsserver.

My premise was BOTH at the same time.

And below was the primary reason WHY.

>> The idea is to not rely on
>> an odd port number ISPs/govts can trivially cut off off,
>> micromanage or charge money for.

VERY few ISPs offer Usenet anymore. In part because it's
less popular these days, but also because it's uncontrolled,
unpurified, a liability risk. Some offer VERY few groups,
"uncontroversial"/"safe" ones. Some even block the port.
So, translating it also to ports they CAN'T block, servers
that get lost in the multitudes, seems a good idea.

Usenet-LIKE text-based uncensored servers, I'd like to
see more of those too. Safety in numbers. Make sure
they can crosspost to 'real' usenet too.

"25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> writes:
> Remember the purpose of NewSpeak ... to so dumb-down and abbreviate
> language and thus ideas that it would be impossible to organize a
> rebellion, or even the complex thoughts to understand that there might
> be a reason for one. The word itself might be obsoleted. No more
> "Common Sense", no more DeclarationsVE ..... just frenetic postings of
> lunch menus and cute kittens forever.

There’s plenty wrong with Twitter but if you think it’s just food and
cat pictures then you’re obviously not paying attention.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

> There's plenty wrong with Twitter but if you think it's just food and
> cat pictures then you're obviously not paying attention.

Yeah. For an old guy like me, it's utterly bizarre that the president
of the USA made policy announcements, fired high-ranking staff and the
like using a medium designed for trivial nattering among people with
tiny attention spans.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>> which is to say the Big Eight heirarchy. Groups in the Big Eight are managed
>> by the backbone cabal. There is a published procedure for creating and
>> removing groups, which involves a whole lot of discussion and voting before
>> a cmesg newgroup is issued.
>
>So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count
>as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have
>encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers
>have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient.

alt.usage english is not a Usenet group. If it makes it less confusing to you,
think about it as being not a Big 8 Group.

Anyone can start a news server, but not everyone can connect it up to
Usenet. If you want to get free. groups or alt. groups that is a different
matter.

>> Altnet came about in the nineties because some people thought this was too
>> restrictive. Anyone can create an alt. group and it is pretty much
>> impossible to ever get rid of one. There is no Usenet Death Penalty for
>> alt. groups and no backbone cabal like there is for the Big Eight groups.
>
>But there is still a process , see
>http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide .

If you read this, it says "you can do these things and ask around and be
polite, but then again you can just forge a control message and that's fine."

>In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about
>uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ?

They are all individual nntp networks. If you run a news server, you can pick
up whichever ones you want.

de. and uk. are regional groups, and at one time there was a lot of argument
about carrying regional groups outside of their region, but really nobody
cares anymore.

There are some regional groups that don't propagate. The mit. groups are
not propagated outside of mit. You might want to carry them, but you will
have a hard time finding someone to feed them to you.

>> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
>> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
>> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
>> been performed.
>
>Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops
>carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how
>is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It
>won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc
>messages with server A.

There is discussion in news.groups.

>> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
>> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
>> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
>> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
>> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
>> mechanisms.
>
>Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example
>ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ?

They could, but then no new alt.flames* groups would get created on their
system. When there were many hundreds of servers, the issue was more
problematic than it is today of course.

>Who are these people who have tried and in what way did they try ?

I gave you the classic example of Meredith's newsgroup.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <wb6SZiSzcXg3iSlXs@bongo-ra.co>,
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 18:58:14 -0000 (UTC)
>Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 14 Aug 2022 17:22:03 -0000
>> kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>> > For the most part this has made many altnet groups totally unusable because
>> > of the lack of control and the history of the alt.sex groups is a very
>> > enlightening example.
>>
>> I have found them perfectly usable myself. alt.usage.english and several
>> alt.os.linux.* groups have high quality content. I haven't visited much
>> the alt.sex groups but at least they have led to www.asstr.org which is
>> a fine website (although I've just tried it and it doesn't respond).
>
>How could I forget ? There is also alt.folklore.computers which is
>excellent.

And don't forget alt.drugs.bongs.bongs.bongs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>
>> There's plenty wrong with Twitter but if you think it's just food and
>> cat pictures then you're obviously not paying attention.
>
>Yeah. For an old guy like me, it's utterly bizarre that the president
>of the USA made policy announcements, fired high-ranking staff and the
>like using a medium designed for trivial nattering among people with
>tiny attention spans.

I assure you that it was not just old guys like us who found this bizarre.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 18 Aug 2022 02:11:19 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> >kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
[...]
> >So according to your terminology alt.usage.english for example does not count
> >as usenet ? I don't think this is standard terminology. The way I have
> >encountered the terms , if it gets transmitted through NNTP and the headers
> >have the usual format then it's usenet. Perhaps just the NNTP part is sufficient.
>
> alt.usage english is not a Usenet group. If it makes it less confusing to you,
> think about it as being not a Big 8 Group.

It's not a matter of confusion , I can get used to either terminology easily
enough , I just want to know what the standard terminology is. I did a bit of
googling :

https://www.newshosting.com/what-is-usenet/
There are currently over 110,000+ newsgroups on Usenet

Clearly here "usenet" doesn't mean just the big 8.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
Some users prefer to use the term "Usenet" to refer only to the Big Eight
hierarchies; others include alt.* as well. The more general term "netnews"
incorporates the entire medium, including private organizational news systems.

It mentions both options.

https://networkencyclopedia.com/usenet/
Usenet is a global network of servers that supports approximately 50,000
newsgroups on every imaginable topic.
[...]
Top-Level Usenet Categories

Category Description
alt Alternative, which is a collection of various topics

Again , by "usenet" they don't mean just the big 8.

> Anyone can start a news server, but not everyone can connect it up to
> Usenet. If you want to get free. groups or alt. groups that is a different
> matter.

Isn't it just a matter of getting peers ? I've looked at the peering requirements
for a few newsservers and I didn't see any special requirements for big 8 groups.
For example https://news.aioe.org/documentation/how-to-setup-a-feed-with-aioeorg/
doesn't even mention big 8 ; same for
http://www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=peering ; same for
https://usenetexpress.com/peering/ .

> >In your classification where does the free.* hierarchy fall ? How about
> >uk.* or language specific hierarchies like de.* ?
>
> They are all individual nntp networks. If you run a news server, you can pick
> up whichever ones you want.
>
> de. and uk. are regional groups, and at one time there was a lot of argument
> about carrying regional groups outside of their region, but really nobody
> cares anymore.

How is it determined that de.* is regional and not a hierarchy for
discussion in German but without any geographic restrictions ? Regardless ,
why would anyone object to regional groups being carried outside the regions
of the groups ? What were their arguments ? It seems to me that one of the
exciting things about the internet is being able to experience indirectly
people and places one would most likely never get to experience in real life.

[...]

> >> If you carry the Big Eight, you carry all the Big Eight groups. That is
> >> part of the agreement. You do not create or remove groups except with
> >> control messages sent throughout the entire heirarchy, after a vote has
> >> been performed.
> >
> >Agreement between which people ? If servers A and B do peering and A stops
> >carrying , say comp.misc , but still carries the other big 8 groups , how
> >is the operator of server B going to find out and why should he care ? It
> >won't cause any problems for server B not to be able to exchange comp.misc
> >messages with server A.
>
> There is discussion in news.groups.

This is much too vague to be useful. On the occasions I've visited
news.groups , I've never seen any discussion on the issue.

> >> If you carry the alt. groups you can remove groups from your local server
> >> but if you do, sooner or later there will be a control message coming down
> >> the line causing the recreation of those groups. People have tried to get
> >> rid of some of the altnet groups for decades and they keep coming back.
> >> Altnet is not Usenet and does not follow Usenet rules but it uses the Usenet
> >> mechanisms.
> >
> >Why can't a server operator simply configure the software to for example
> >ignore all control messages for alt.flames* newsgroups ?
>
> They could, but then no new alt.flames* groups would get created on their
> system. When there were many hundreds of servers, the issue was more
> problematic than it is today of course.

So in particular alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.meredith-tanner (AFHM) would not get
recreated on their server. Isn't this good enough ? They could even filter
messages which get crossposted to AFHM and announce in their policy that they
do so. So , as far as that server is concerned , AFHM does not exist anymore.
If other servers want to carry it , that's their business.

--
The bad dancer is hindered by his own arse.
Yiddish saying

On 2022-08-17 8:12 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>
>> There's plenty wrong with Twitter but if you think it's just food and
>> cat pictures then you're obviously not paying attention.
>
> Yeah. For an old guy like me, it's utterly bizarre that the president
> of the USA made policy announcements, fired high-ranking staff and the
> like using a medium designed for trivial nattering among people with
> tiny attention spans.
>

I don't tweet but my attention span is somewhat reduced
as I get older. Perhaps I don't tolerate repetitious
nattering as much as I did when younger. Is twitter
for me then?

On 8/3/22 9:04 AM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 22:34:38 -0400
> "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>> On 8/2/22 9:10 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> And that's why we need as many servers as possible. Otherwise , yes freedom
>>>> has de facto limits. After all , people have been jailed or killed for saying
>>>> some things in public , usenet cannot magically remove such physical
>>>> possibilities , it can at most make them harder.
>>>
>>> Having as many servers as possible means that people who really should be
>>> removed from the net do not get removed. That's kind of the problem today.
>>> The management system that worked for Usenet does not scale up.
>>
>>
>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>
>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>> so you're no longer bothered.
>
> Yes , that's my feeling too. Having said that , with a huge amount of servers
> available , I expect some would do filtering. Say for example person A thinks
> that person B is a jerk. Then person A can run a news server which filters
> all posts by B. Those people who agree that B is indeed a jerk could connect
> to this server and not see any posts by B without bothering to do any
> filtering themselves. Those who still want to see posts by B could connect to
> a different server. But I'm totally against the idea that B should be
> prevented on a worldwide level from making available his/her views online. In
> extreme circumstances (like , B is sharing a realistic way to construct an
> atomic bomb using ordinary kitchen materials !) then maybe but in such cases
> the authorities would likely need to be involved anyway and handle the matter
> in the physical world and that's a whole different discussion.

Everybody has favorite perspectives - and, even unconsciously,
kinda tramps-down the "heretics". This is why we need some
sources where such activity is just not tolerated, or possible.
IMHO, the ability to make yourself heard is still too low -
it NEEDS to be where even aggressive govts can't stop it.
Bounce lasers off the moon if need-be.

Sorry, but you're not gonna build a nuke based on Formula-409.
That takes industrial-scale facilities. Now super-GERMS ...
those ARE more worrisome. That can be done at a small scale,
undetectable ; just requires some knowledge. Numerous fanatic
and terrorist orgs already have access to the knowledge
and cheapo tech. Don't let your stock of masks and sanitizer
get too low ......