å¤ç¥ å²©ç· wrote:
On Mon, 2011-07-18 at 10:54 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 7/18/2011 10:27 AM, å¤ç¥ å²©ç· wrote:
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So... what is wrong with newsreaders? In my experience the provide all the benefits of email (speed, uniform interface, etc.) that you listed as well as all the benefits of a post/fetch paradigm that I get from forums without any of the hassles of either.
Interesting that you bring this up in the context of spam. The problem with net news is that all of the servers stopped handling it because of the porn and copyright-infringing binaries postings that overwhelm it.
Newsreaders require a news server. News servers can be run by anyone, it doesn't require a global cabal to serve news. In the later days of usenet it was overwhelmed by crap, largely because of the enormous number of groups created by people who didn't have time to maintain them, had a blanket anonymous publish policy, and eventually never showed back up to take care of their lists. Lists such as that got swamped, and so did the servers, which made the whole system unweidly (though news server networks are still run today and moderation via user validation is still an option).
The beginning of its downhill slide, IMO, was when AOL got on. I remember that happening: AOL auto-subscribed *all* its users to certain newsgroups, and for some utterly clueless reason, that included alt.best.of.internet. I occasionally dipped into that group, and the flamewars started then, with idiots announcing that they could post anything they wanted, anywhere they wanted. That, and the Green Card Spam, where K&S proclaimed that there was no such thing as "community", that it was all the wild west.
What I am describing is the running of a newsgroup server specific to a project or interest, say news.centos.org (or whatever for whatever).
A big eight newsgroup, moderated, is what this sounds like. Let me note that if you want, I can point you to a quite good robomoderator: it approves regular posters, checks new for on-topic, and if it can't make up its mind, forwards it to designated human moderators. <snip>
mark