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.
Hello world. I haven't been here long but I just wanna say that Mastodon has really rekindled my love of the internet. It feels like the best of old and new school social media, and takes me back to the Usenet, IRC, and forum days all at once.
The community is phenomenal, kind, and helpful; hashtags are great again; it's not just some centralised cesspool run by a billion dollar child; algorithm shmalgorithm; and it's FOSS! Amazing all round.
This might be the caffeine and ADHD medication talking but I love you. Take my affection and enjoy the rest of your day. :blobcat_hearthug:
This is a little project I've been working on for a few weeks. I think the basic functionality is now working, though there are still many aspects I hope to improve. Of course much of usenet is now a wasteland inhabited only by spammers and cranks. But there are still worthwhile corners, such as comp.lang.tcl, so I think this may have some value. 🙂 #usenet#tcl#tcltk#programming
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!).
After a year off Twitter, I'm surprised that I don't have even a single regret about leaving. The more I think about it, the more I realize it wasn't the takeover that did it. Sure, there was a massive and harmful political shift, but there's just always been something about the platform that attracts extremely unhealed people regardless of political leaning.
You can make a post like "I just got a coffee and the milk was sour" then someone on the right will be like "Biden's border crisis is the reason we can't get good milk anymore" and then someone on the left will be like "do you think starving children in Africa would complain about sour milk?". Eventually, you just realize the platform is designed for people who's only form of therapy is logging on to the internet and being annoying as fuck.
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?
Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the early 80s, and which still is active and operating? Admittedly in a much diminished state than a…
L'altro giorno ho aperto un post, sotto il quale si è accesa una bella discussione, opinioni molto contrastanti ma discussione civile e costruttiva, l'esatto contrario di quello che si vede oggi sui social, con tanti spunti di riflessione.
Il giorno dopo si inserisce nella discussione un tale jones, ma purtroppo ero a lavoro ed ho potuto seguire qualcosa solo dalle notifiche, anche lì sembrava tutto ok.
Ma non mi piace lasciare le cose a metà, pertanto la prima cosa che ho fatto quando sono rientrato a casa è stata quella di andare a leggere tutto e, con mia grande sorpresa, di questo fenomeno ho trovato solo l'ultimo messaggio: "alla prossima notifica di questo threads che ricevo, blocco chi lo ha aperto".
Cioè, questo fenomeno, è venuto su un mio post, non so cosa cazzo ha scritto, non so se e con chi ha sbroccato... Ed ha cancellato tutto (anche le repliche sono sparite)... Ed ha bloccato me? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Io l'ho bloccato appena ho capito con chi avevo a che fare, ed ho anche scritto un post per celebrare la prima persona con cui avevo interagito che bloccavo su #Mastodon (finora avevo solo silenziato) https://mastodon.uno/@opensoul/111739231082403452 😃 come facevo anni fa su quella bellissima cosa che era #Usenet
Era solo questione di tempo 😞
Confrontarsi civilmente e con rispetto con chi la pensa diversamente, non è evidentemente appannaggio di tutti. Per me è una ricchezza, ma come vedi non è per tutti 😞
Admittedly in a much diminished state than at it’s heyday.
I don’t know if you ever heard the term Usenet before, and even if you did, if you don’t just connect it with data piracy. Because that’s what it is mostly used for nowadays.
What it started out as were discussion forums.
Back in the late 70s, after ARPANET had been created and email had been invented, a few programmers came up with an idea for an electronic bulletin board that could be read asynchronously. This was the time when computers still were only in big institutions like universities, big companies, and the military, and the whole idea was to create “a poor man’s ARPANET”. Connections between computers were rare and expensive , but possible. So these “news” started as a way to propagate articles and messages along servers that were not constantly connected to the internet. Some of the servers involved would only connect once a day to the network to transfer messages in and out (often at night because charges were lower then). A message might travel for multiple days before it reached all nodes in the network, and some of the earliest were messages about a nascent hobby popular among the people using this network: fantasy role-playing.
From what I can see the first two messages on the brand new group net.games.frp were sent out on the 12th of January 1982.
To give you an idea just how early this was: it was before the abbreviation RPG became common, people were still talking about Fantasy RolePlaying instead, so even today the group-names use the abbreviation FRP.
It’s quite a fascinating system that over time has become ever more complex and popular, before the ascent of html, hyperlinks, and the world wide web pushed it into the seedy corners of the ‘net.
Instead of having websites, Usenet is organized in newsgroups, and those groups are organized in hierarchies. There are the so called Big Eight that have a certain standard for group creation and posting (e.g. rec. for recreational topics, and comp. for topics concerning computers), and there are others, organized in one way or another (famously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.*_hierarchy which had lower standards for the creation of new groups).
Messages are sent to one or more groups (crossposted), distributed around the network, and people respond to these posts. Interesting discussions and arguments ensue, people get angry, flame wars ensue, other people learn something new, weird in-jokes develop, stuff happens.
All that can be read via archives, the biggest of which is Google Groups, which both is a boon and downfall of the service: Google purchased the old newsgroup archives of DejaNews back in the 90s, and integrated it in it’s Google Groups service. In a picture-perfect example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish the users of Groups had a web interface that allowed them access to their old newsgroups, access to new groups that only existed on Google, but also allowed spammers to flood the connected newsgroups with loads of unmoderated spam. Spam that recently was quoted by them as a reason to cut the connection with Usenet, bringing this phase of the network to an end.
But Usenet still is running, and most likely will be running as long as there are people willing to run servers for it. But the biggest Usenet servers nowadays are piracy servers that keep the text-part of the Usenet as more of an afterthought. At one point someone came up with a way to use the text-only format of Usenet in a way to distribute data that was binary, i.e. not purely text. And this took over most of the system.
But I am not really interested in that and never was. What I am interested in are the fantasy roleplaying parts of that network.
rec.games.frp.*
I said that the forum has been running since the late 70s, but that’s not quite correct. The original structure of Usenet grew organically from the beginning. People were creating new groups when it suited them and it seemed logical. Which soon caused some hierarchies (specifically the net. hierarchy) to swell with groups that could barely be maintained. In a great upheaval in 1987 all the groups were renamed and restructured.
Some old hands are still angry about it and will bitch about it for days. That also is Usenet.
One can argue that the fantasy roleplaying group has existed since before that time. One also could argue that it only exists since 1987. Which still is older than the World Wide Web.
Usenet is divided into hierarchies, and the frp-hierarchy is part of the rec. (recreation-hierarchy) and .games. sub-hierarchy.
There are currently 11 .frp. groups in that hierarchy:
rec.games.frp.dnd
of course… it’s the hierarchy for Dungeons and Dragons. Always one of the biggest topics of the whole FRP forums this one got it’s own group.
rec.games.frp.misc
for basically all other kinds of discussions about roleplaying games
rec.games.frp.cyber
for cyberpunk systems (e.g. Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun).
rec.games.frp.super-heroes
for superhero games
rec.games.frp.live-action
anything LARP goes here.
rec.games.frp.announce
announcements and news about products go here
rec.games.frp.industry
for all kinds of discussions about the rpg industry
rec.games.frp.storyteller
yes, this was created when the World of Darkness was big enough to demand it’s own forum
rec.games.frp.gurps
For GURPS, this part was created because while never the most popular game, it’s fans flooded the main group with so many messages about builds that it was decided to give them their own place.
rec.games.frp.advocacy
all kinds of discussions about roleplaying games as such and how they work. This is where the Forge came from back in the day
rec.games.frp.market
I guess this is for selling stuff. I have literally never seen a message in there.
Most of these lay fallow right now, with me and a few others being the only ones posting there every once in a while. I do have to admit part of it is because I don’t want to lose the that part of ttrpg history to a random deletion request for non-use.
Other TTRPG groups
The main hierarchies are not the only ones. Most normal Usenet servers carry at least the Big Eight, but most also carry others. The big other hierarchy is alt. (…definitely not named for Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists, all evidence to the contrary…), which makes it easier to create groups. This means there are a few other groups here that might be of interest, if they ever would get someone to post in them. Their structure though is not as organized as the ones in the Big 8.
alt.games.frp.adnd-util
about utilities for playing ADnD. I would say, a general groups for RPG utilities.
alt.games.adnd
for ADnD. I am not sure why this exists, maybe because the main one was too stodgy, or it was created because someone thought ADnD was sufficiently different than DnD to warrant it’s own group
alt.games.earthdawn
for Earthdawn. Remember Earthdawn?
alt.games.x-files.rpg
For the X-Files RPG. Remember that?
alt.games.whitewolf
I guess a group for White Wolf games, which is also already covered in rec.games.frp.storyteller
alt.games.tolkien.rpg
a group about playing in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
There are also local and language dependent groups around. Many languages and regions have their own hierarchies for exchanges between locals and/or in other languages.
uk.games.roleplay
group for roleplaying in the UK
de.rec.spiele.rpg.misc
general group for discussions of RPGs in German
z-netz.freizeit.rollenspiele.dsa
originally this was an Echo in a mailbox network, by now z-netz. is a small alternative German Usenet hierarchy. This particular one about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye
pl.rec.gry.rpg
Polish-language group
es.rec.juegos.rol
Spanish-language group
se.spel.rollspel
Swedish-language group
dk.fritid.rollespil
Danish-language group
fr.rec.jeux.jdf
French-language group
it.hobby.giochi.gdr
Italian-language group
hr.rec.igre.rpg
Hungarian-language group
aus.games.roleplay
Australian group
There are more, some of which I might not even find that easy because they are not on the servers I frequent (not all servers carry all groups) or are so specialized they might not be of interest to anyone but locals (e.g. saar.rec.rollenspiele exists, but I doubt many people in Saarland (the smallest of Germany’s federal states) still know Usenet exists)
Ok, ok, but how do you actually ACCESS this Usenet thingy?
That’s a bit more difficult, but not much. It used to be ISPs were all running their own news servers, this was actually the REASON you might want internet access as a private person, but that isn’t the case anymore. Google Groups is also going away, so that’s not a real option.
An easy way to check out what is being talked about on the FRP-hierarchy is campaignwiki.org/news. This server makes it possible to read and post on his own small server via a web-interface. The server is only running roleplaying-related groups, including the global FRP-hierarchy, and a few local ones that do not get carried in many other places.
Another way to access it via web browser is via web gateways. There are a few around, e.g. NovaBBS. There are a few of those around, but they might not carry all the groups (NovaBBS e.g. only rec.games.frp.dnd and .misc, because those are the ones with most activity).
The proper way to use it is of course by getting an account on a news server and adding it to your feed reader of choice. True hardcore users use terminal-based readers like tin or Gnus, but many Email programs like Mozilla Thunderbirdallow you to subscribe to newsgroups.
Most of these have instructions on how to connect on their websites.
Note: This is a redo of an article I wrote 13 years ago. Originally I thought I could just let that one stand like that, but just briefly reading through it I noticed things had changed dramatically in some areas. So I rewrote the whole thing from scratch.
PS 1Gotta admit that the point about the object systems in R is somewhat spot on
PS 2 #php gets a dishonorable mention
PS3 I will continue to find ways to continue using all 4 of the aforementioned languages, as they are all performant and deliver in complementary ways.
still playing around with my shiny new #bbs, added a lot of basically empty #ttrpg groups to the #usenet section of it, now trying to get them to load.
it would help if the documentation of the software doesn't just assume I know how the parameters for their command line are supposed to work.
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.
This announcement also signifies the conclusion of Google’s Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server services, including content peering with other NNTP servers.
The Oldest TTRPG Forum on the Net (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the early 80s, and which still is active and operating? Admittedly in a much diminished state than a…