From:
theise@panix.com
On Mon, 18 Sep 2017 22:25:49 -0700 (PDT),
rdent@purdue.edu <
rdent@purdue.edu> wrote:
On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 4:14:42 PM UTC-4, nichola...@vice.com wrote:
Hello everyone,
My name is Nicholas Deleon and I'm an editor at Motherboard,
Vice Media's science and technology website based in New York.
I'm currently working on a story about Usenet text discussion
groups and the motivations to still use them in 2017 (as
opposed to other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I
used to lurk here when I was a kid in the early 2000s and I
was pretty surprised to see that there's still an active
community. Would anyone be will to speak to chat in the next
couple days (can be via email, Skype, etc.) about why they
continue to post here? What are the draws to Usenet versus
other platforms? Does it improve the level of discourse that
the group is a little off the beaten path, so to speak?
I can be reached by email at nicholas.deleon@vice.com if
anyone would like to get in touch.
Thanks!
-Nicholas
I think it's kinda funny and ironic to post on such an outdated
forum.
But above all, something about it feels very cozy and
nostalgic. I wasn't even born until 96, long after this place
started, but something about it still feels...right.
The original post doesn't seem to be available on the news server
I use, so I'm following up to the followup from rdent.
Assuming you are still working on the story (which seems
doubtful), here are a few more thoughts.
You will probably find that folks on Usenet trend old, as many
(most?) came to it when there were few other options and have been
here for quite some time. For me, I like the text based format,
the fact that the topics are very specialized, and the lightweight
nature of the medium (no heavy webpages to load).
The threading capabilities that most good newsreaders have, as
well as the ability to highlight (or kill) certain threads and/or
posters are also nice aspects of the medium. It's pretty easy to
walk the thread in any direction to zero in on specific posts.
For me, I use old command line UNIX programs for both e-mail and
news (Pine and slrn) and they have the capability of storing
messages in the same format and archive. So I can mix news and
e-mail in common directory structures.
--
Ted Heise <
theise@panix.com> Bloomington, IN, USA
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