Hello, I know that the fediverse contains many challengers to the walled garden approach of the main stream social media options. But, unless I miss comprehend, the fediverse isn't anything new, more a return to how things were in the the past. Case in point Newsgroups. Why aren't they mentioned in the same breath as Lemmy, kbin or Mastodon?

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[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Because they're ancient, depreciated, and technically obsolete.

For example: usenet groups are essentially unmoderated, which allows spammers, trolls, and bad actors free reign to do what it is they do. This was not a design consideration when usenet was being developed, because the assumption was all the users would have a name, email, and traceable identity so if you acted like a stupid shit, everyone already knew exactly who you were, where you worked/went to school, and could apply actual real-world social pressure to you to stop being a stupid fuck.

This, of course, does not work anymore, and has basically been the primary driver of why usenet has just plain died as a discussion forum because you just can't have an unmoderated anything without it turning into the worst of 4chan, twitter, and insert-nazi-site-of-choice-here combined with a nonstop flood of spam and scams.

So it died, everyone moved on, and I don't think that there's really anyone who thinks the global usenet backbone is salvagable as a communications method.

HOWEVER, you can of course run your own NNTP server and limit access via local accounts and simply not take the big global feed. It's useful as a protocol, but then, at that point, why use NNTP over a forum software, or Lemmy (even if it's not federating), or whatever?

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 days ago

This was not a design consideration when usenet was being developed, because the assumption was all the users would have a name, email, and traceable identity so if you acted like a stupid shit, everyone already knew exactly who you were, where you worked/went to school, and could apply actual real-world social pressure to you to stop being a stupid fuck.

The first email spammer got a call from the US Air Force Major in charge of ARPANET and nobody send spam for a while. We should have kept doing that.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

For example: usenet groups are essentially unmoderated

That is highly dependent on the newsgroup. Many newsgroups WERE heavily moderated. The ones in the alt branch were not, generally.

But, say, comp.os.linux? It was very moderated.

Additionally, a couple of projects tried to put a really nice, forum-like UI on top of NNTP, and it worked pretty well. The problem was a lack of uptake, really, because "Well, we have facebook and reddit already!"

One of the "bigger" attempts at this was done when forums were basically dying, and everyone was moving to facebook and reddit, away from forums.

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I miss forums. I used to host one for a guild on a game I played. We used the forum for quest hints, and long term planning. But then used icq and the like for quick communication.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Forums seem like the most natural use case for ActivityPub. I'm over the Reddit style UX, and absolutely ready to take a step back and try to pick an older jumping off point.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lemmy/Reddit is basically a forum with the one significant difference being threaded vs linear comments. Would a version of Lemmy slightly modified to have linear comments and only text posts work as a traditional forum?

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No, they're not. Forums and content aggregators are significantly different in terms of user experience and, frankly, project goals.

One of the biggest differences between Reddit and forums is focus. A web forum is focused on a topic, and has sub-topics. Content aggregators are flat, and focused on, well, content aggregation. They're a mix between link aggregators and blogs. The modern version of them also involves user created and maintained discussion groups, where forums have set sub-topics and generally have site-wide moderation.

And modern forums, FWIW, have threaded comment chains.

Reddit and Reddit-like services are really quite shit at being forums. There's very little about the user experience that they have in common.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

And modern forums, FWIW, have threaded comment chains.

Do you have a few examples of modern, active forums ? Curious to have a see what this looks like

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago

Same here! Which is a huge reason I actually enjoy lemmy, for the time being. It's a forum, complete with subforums, and decentralized!

[–] realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's Newsgroups?

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups. Before the adoption of the World Wide Web, Usenet newsgroups were among the most popular Internet services.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup

[–] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 6 points 2 days ago

Probably for most of the same reasons that IRC isn't mentioned for fediverse chat, the main one being that they don't use one of the newer federation protocols. They don't talk the same federation protocol language, so you can't really group them under the same category.