It is ironical that we talk about usenet everywhere but on usenet. Events like the blackout on reddit and the scramble to move to alternate platforms would hardly be necessary if usenet worked clearly as a discussion platform.
While everyone blames spam for the slow death of discussions on usenet, I think there are a couple of other reasons:
- access over http
- searchability
These two reasons are why Google Groups continues to work while discussions on usenet barely do.
Usenet has to evolve to provide solutions to these problems:
- spam: moderated groups are an insufficient solution when compared to moderation tools provided by modern discussion platforms.
- usenet over http: people should be able to carry on discussions using browsers as well as apps. They should be able to share links to these discussions as well.
- search: people should be able to conduct a search across all discussions by using native as well as third-party search engines (Google, Bing, Brave etc).
This might be a good thing. All that is required is a little research and gumption. Filtering out those without that means a higher grade of users.
I’ve come to believe that mass adoption, as we’re suggesting here, and high quality content are mutually exclusive. I agree that the current barrier to entry self-curates the content a bit but the same barriers will forever relegate it to the fringe.
That doesn’t test for their ability to meaningfully contribute to a discussion group. There would never be a robust group of woodworkers because the grandpa with years of professional woodworking experience has been excluded for using iPad. It will always be a group of tech focused people discussing woodworking.