Newshosting newsreader client download how to#
Newshosting newsreader client download android#
Newshosting newsreader client download software#
Newshosting newsreader client download free#

It's hard to search with precision, upvoting gives undue weight to popular-but-incorrect viewpoints, and moderators are unresponsive, capricious, and unaccountable (give me my personally-maintained regex-powered killfile, any day). I only use Reddit because it's the closest thing that still exists to USENET, but with a larger userbase.

Many 'successful' projects can only dream of a failure of that magnitude!Īnd, I'm sorry, but I find the idea that Reddit's UX is better ridiculous. USENET failed? I was still an active user until the late 1990s, by which time it was nearly 20 years old. But I hope it will give open source and open standards developers a little jolt towards designing user experiences which are fun and easy to use. And I doubt this will lead to a resurgence in Usenet. I'm a little sad that Reddit is further enclosing the commons. It was hard to set up, there was a ton of terminology to learn, sticky posts with group etiquette didn't exist, trolls and grieffers couldn't be moderated away, and the whole thing looked like a 1990s shareware accountancy package.

Reddit was Usenet with a sparkly front-end.

Newshosting newsreader client download how to#

WhatsApp groups are just ListServes for people who don't know how to configure a server.

Newshosting newsreader client download android#

I couldn't find any Open Source Android apps for reading newsgroups.Īnd, as it happens, my ISP killed off their Usenet server a couple of years ago.Īs I've said before - Slack is just IRC with a better UI. There was only one modern newsreader listed by my Linux distro - Pan which hasn't been updated in a year and has a GUI which gave me instant nostalgia. While Reddit goes through its 'are we the baddies?' moment of banning all 3rd party clients and fucking over its unpaid labour force, I thought I'd return to see if Usenet was still a viable option. I should briefly mention Google buying the Deja News archive, promising to revitalise Usenet, and then promptly abandoning it. All of them centralised (booo!) and privately owned (boooo!) but all having a nicer UI and UX (yay!)

Newshosting newsreader client download software#

NNTP software was fragile.Īnd so, slowly but surely, I drifted away from newsgroups into the tender embrace of web forums, Reddit, and Slack. In a world of animated GIFs and MySpace colour schemes, Usenet didn't even have avatar images! Sure, the spartan nature meant that you could focus on a conversation - but it didn't feel as modern and exciting as the web did. Look, eBay wasn't perfect - but it made it easy to see how many successful transactions an account had made. You might send money or goods to a scammer. Sites like AVForums and eBay allowed you to see who was a reliable buyer and seller. And there was very little feedback on whether people found your posts useful. Without upvoting and downvoting, it became tedious to read. Usenet was a stream of consciousness and, short of blocking individuals, there was no way to separate the interesting topics from the dull. Sites like Slashdot were - at the time - pretty good at moderating out crap comments. There are three main reasons that I remember.įirst was moderation. I lurked in the comp.lang.* hierarchy until I was confident enough to ask my Prolog questions without making it look like I was asking for help with my university assignments. I bought and sold computer equipment, published terrible poetry, and learned about LGBT matters. My university experience was dominated by Usenet. But I persevered and, by the time I went to university, understood all the intricacies of PLONK, ROFL, and Godwin's Law.

Newshosting newsreader client download free#

Quite the world away from CompuServe's shiny software delivered on a free CD. This required downloading, installing, and configuring an NNTP client. Magical.Īt some point, I discovered Usenet and its decentralised collection of newsgroups. A couple of clicks and I could be discussing Babylon 5 with people in another country, downloading wallpapers, and uploading my poor attempts at fan-fiction. When I first got online, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy - so CompuServe was my gateway to the Internet. This is annecdata - not a serious academic study.