It had its high time approx. 90s to mid 00s. I very much enjoyed it.
It ticks all the boxes when it comes to #federation and freedom of interface: a number of web-based services, CLI tools like #slrn (mine), #Thunderbird and other GUI-tools.
trying out some stuff on the side regarding my #usenet setup. turns out #leafnode doesn't even take more than a second to get all groups from a normal news server. for the #nntp server on my local bbs it is taking the better part of two hours so far, and it's not even finished yet.
I think that's more an issue with the nntp implementation in synchronet though.
Redoing my #introduction again since it's now been a quarter of a year since I first joined Mastodon:
Hello! 👋 I'm an #autistic Gen Z-er born in the mid-2000s, and I go by the name "Quinn" (with he/him pronouns) on most Internet platforms. I'm a fan of #Indieweb, #SmallWeb, #RSS, #NNTP, and the #Fediverse! 😁
The only two social media platforms I currently use are Mastodon and YouTube. I haven't really dabbled with any other social medias at this point.
Came across this really cool service called Feedbase. It turns your #RSS feeds into #NNTP (Newsgroup) posts that you can comment on! It's definitely grown quite a bit in the last year per the statistics on the website.
Feel free to add your own RSS feeds to your blog or newsletter to the service on the website to help grow the service! It's currently hosting 861 feeds, and serving 5,319,339 articles at the time of this post.
Accessing Mastodon and the fediverse via email: https://www.olowe.co/tmp/fedimail.mp4
An experimental #IMAP and #SMTP interface.
I feel like #NNTP#Usenet interface would be more appropriate.
But gotta start somewhere!
Threading and replies work ok too (so far!).
If you’re like me and too young to get the name. It’s a funny and kinda sad tbh part of net history.
Also very into the idea of trying to set up an off grid, text only, hyper local, community #LoRa#nntp server in PDX… anyone want to tinker? Is this a thing?
Mostly. I am still trying to get it to work with #usenet, and I still need to get email working.
I'm not sure why I should have a BBS in the first place, but there you go.
It mostly is actually intended as a #nntp server for #ttrpg groups. And it largely works. I can USE it as a server. I just can't pull any new articles from other servers right now, which makes this somewhat less than ideal.
The sad state of my quest for a Usenet NNTP GUI client for Linux.
Pan is awesome but the binaries of my Debian Bullseye based distro, Crostini, are ancient and buggy. The Pan project distributes no .deb or other packages. Building from source requires recent versions of tools not in Bullseye.
Very few other GUI options available. Even fewer with .deb or other binaries.
I can't figure how to set up the username and password of my account for the NNTP server and the passowrd of my email account for the outgoing SMTP server. It's not clear whether it's even possible.
With all that #fediverse effervescence, I just rediscovered #irc with #weechat, and realized that #neomutt also support #usenet servers. Going back to the source in a way.
I have complicated feelings regarding #Usenet and #NNTP due to some server-centric aspects.
Granted due to message #gossip the death of any given instance isn't catastrophic and moving is largely unnoticeable, but it still puts some hurdles on usability in adverse conditions.
It still fulfills most of the #AsynchronousCommunication characteristics handily, but that's still a nagging thought, since /most/ instances demand fairly high-uptime to peer and don't allow such instability from peers.
For those of us of a certain age (who typically now have a lot of gray in our hair🤣) who were online before the #Internet connected everything, #USENET was one of the original places where we posted in forums, engaged in debates (and the occasional flame war), learned a lot, spent way too much time, and yes, sometimes dealt with abusive and toxic behavior. USENET never really went away, and some are trying to bring it back…
> See, because you need an always-on computer in order to really reliably use #decentralized social media
Bruh. #Usenet, #Fidonet and #UUCP (#UUCPnet) beg to differ (no reason you couldn't use #NNCP for Usenet now if #NNTP isn't your thing).