Usenet Service Recommendations

Hi all, I thought I'd check out Usenet to see if it can fill my need for conversation without all the JavaScript and ads we see on the websites these days. Can anyone recommend a good, preferably free, service? I saw Eternal-September.org, which fits the bill for testing the waters, but I don't know much about it. Can anyone offer some insight? Also, I've been looking into reader clients. On the CLI side, slrn and tin seem to be leaders of the pack. Are there any other clients worth looking at? Thanks for any advice!

Check out your ISP and colleges or universities near you. Mine used to provide usenet access.

>>15907 Way back in the day, a bunch of ISPs dropped their Usenet services. It had to do with a lawsuit from New York based on all the porn and warez that were passing through the servers. A lot of colleges followed suit. Besides Eternal September, there is also http://www.aioe.org. AIOE is pretty strict, though. They'll knock you off for being on the server too long and they have a limit of 40 messages per session (if I remember correctly). Also, be aware that Google indexes the remaining Usenet servers. I once posted on a Usenet group and checked Google about a minute later. The post had already been indexed and was avaiilable via Google Groups. Not that it matters, but I was using Tin at the time. The Tin config has a field that needs to be filled out or you will end up making posts with your user name and computer name. Because of the Google indexing, be sure to fill that field out with a fake name and email address. I briefly thought about making multiple tinrc files so that I could make a shell script to switch identities with different Usenet servers, but the value seemed negligible. Quick questions fo anyone interested in answering: Any value in Usenet inside of Tor or I2P?

>>15904 i read on the gophernet that sdf provides usenet access on their public access unix machine, but i think they're either having problems or intentionally not accepting new accounts right now. i've been trying to get a shell account there for the past couple of days and keep getting the same message that they're doing maintenance and can't add an account for 45 minutes. i've also been interested in checking out what usenet is like these days. i don't think i'll find a lot of active or interesting discussion there, but im just curious to take a look anyway.

>>15934 I think you'll be surprised. I checked out something like a rec.arts writing group and found posts about writing from this year. Another group had movie reviews from last year. Granted, you won't find conversations at the volume of most web boards, but it looks like people really are still using the network. I think part of it may be Google. A lot of posts have signatures with URLs and Google seems to capture Usenet posts almost as soon as they're posted. I guess that could be useful from a search result perspective. I wish there was a way to counter Google indexing, but I think that Google is just capitalizing on the nature of Usenet.

>>15935 If you don't want your posts permanently in Google's archive use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive

>>15904 I had an account a few years ago with XS Usenet that was free. If I remember right there is no secure connection, and speed was quite slow, but it worked fine for reading and posting messages.

>>15937 The header is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't stop quoting in other messages. There's an article that makes a convincing argument about the drawbacks here: https://www.sweharris.org/post/2011-07-05-x-no-archive/ I think the only way to get around it would be to have some end-to-end solution that basically kept Google and similar parties out of the loop, which may not be feasible due to technical and mindshare issues.

Juat as a follow-up, the article does point out the use of purpose-specific email addresses and whatnot to keep a separation from personal identity and Usenet identity. The article also correctly points out that it isn't fair to force others to use the header or not quote messages and so forth. On the other hand, respecting the header is completely voluntary, so its usefulness is minimized.

This link might be of interest... www.open-news-network.org

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What do you hope to gain besides an appreciation for how things were done back in the day? As far as I understand there's hardly any activity left on Usenet and Google groups archives everything for public viewing anyway.

>>16637 The 'diversity of means' benefit aside, it's best to have quick access to all free data, irregarding the means. This implies having good (secure, fast,,) implementations of all protocols, not just popular protocols. Similarly for publishing data, some people have arbitrary restrictions on data access, so it's important that all data you publish is accessible via any protocol. There ought to already be systems for aggregating means of data access and publication, so that there is a unified meta-interface to all protocols.