Usenet is good

Just spotted this article on the Guardian's web site from the 2nd of January. I quote...

Blogs as newsgroups
Usenet newsgroups were rendered worse than useless by wayward discussion and wall-to-wall spam. Now, according to some web theorists, blogs are bringing back the newsgroup idea, albeit by the backdoor. The idea is that, on blogs that let readers discuss links and find out where similar ideas are being discussed elsewhere on the web, we're seeing the rise of a kind of twenty first century Usenet - more focused, more responsive, more integrated into the rest of the online world. JM

Usenet is "worse than useless" is it? Someone forgot to tell usenet. Usenet is useful, today. Groups such as uk.media.tv.misc about the joys of British television, uk.culture.nogstalia.1980s for the nostalgics and even rec.music.artists.emmylou-harris about the music of Emmylou Harris.

For sure, usenet was unprepared for the spam attacks, but we adapted. It works.

To hold up blogs as an improvement is just.... wrong. The discussion system on most web sites is bad. Really bad. My god it's awful.

Try a quick experiment, go to your favourite discussion web site and read a bunch of messages. Say there's 40 messages posted. Around message number 20, stop reading, log out. You've read about half the messages there, leaving 20 unread.

A day later, let's say there another 10 messages have been added. You've read 20 and there should be 30 more. Since web forums are better, it should be ridiculously easy to only see the 30 you have not read without having to wade through the 20 you've already seen? Um... no. Usenet, on the other hand, has been able to only show you unread articles since 1981. So much for progress.

To be fair, some web forums have fixed this to a certain extent, To take advantage of this though, you usually need to register yourself. Joy, yet another password to remember for each and every forum you read.

Ever seen your favourite web site not work? Web sites are centralised, which makes them vulnerable. What do you do if your favourite web site stops working or the people who maintain decide to shut down? Well, there's precious little you can do. Whereas usenet will continue to work so long as any two people can keep thier ends running. So much for progress.

With the great obsession for novelty and sexyness, we're losing sight of what's useful. If you excuse me now, I shall contemplate the irony of posting this rant on a web site.