So I've finally been doing my little reddit/twitter migration against my better judgement (my better judgement would say to take the opportunity to get off the internet but who listens to that loser). I'm finding all these platforms interesting, I particularly like how kbin combines both formats and links up to Mastodon, that's quite an idea.
Having said that all this nonsense made me nostalgic for Usenet all over again. I had some very enjoyable years on there and quite a lot of what I liked about Reddit was actually that it felt like the closest thing the web had to Usenet. (You'd think Google Groups was the closest thing but for some reason it wasn't. There is something I just loved about a newsreader's interface that Google Groups didn't replicate and it was just annoying).
It actually made me go check some old newsgroups out, and, well, that's the eternal problem Usenet isn't it - it being 99% dead as a parrot.
Is anybody still on Usenet, and if so what newsgroups do you follow? For that matter, what newsgroups are you aware of as still having some activity? Is anybody interested in getting (back) on it, and if so on where? Is Google Groups still in 2023 the best the web has to offer in terms of accessing it easily?
There is still active discussions over usenet :) not as much as before but still, example comp.lang.php https://reader.usenet.monster/group?group=comp.lang.php
Then there are also binaries groups which are NOT dead and still living ;)
Its even having a mini resurgence at the moment.
I think that would be cool tbh. Although the more I've been thinking about it over the last couple of days the more I'm remembering all the various barriers to entry that make it hard on a web interface, I still feel that 1) I don't know that any are straight-up insurmountable, as opposed to nobody having had much motivation to surmount them since like 2005, and 2) everybody doesn't need to be on it for it to be worth being on. But you do need a minimal supply of new blood.
Do you have specifics or links on what form that mini resurgence is taking?
Hi ! I only realized that you'd posted a link after u/btaf45 (@btaf45?) highlighted it. That's a really interesting usenet reader, do you know if there exists a website that highlights groups by activity, or can display the most recent messages from all groups like the main page of a social media aggregator? It seems to me that if reader.usenet.monster can do what it does it should be able to do that too but I don't see that kind of page on that site.
[reader.usenet.monster/group?group=comp.lang.php]
This is awesome. Thanks!
I heard that the comp.lang ones were still active ! And while I'm not wildly into computer languages as a subject of conversation I'm not totally not into it either. Are they all mostly about helping each other with coding questions or are there some with conversations that would be interesting to something with a more generic interest in computing?
Yes I gathered that :) I don't know if those tend to have lot of conversation though?
I see rec.arts.sf.written and talk.origins are active, which tracks honestly but is still a nice surprise. sci.bio.evolution seems deceased, I don't know if any other science group survived.