Re: You Can Use the Internet the Old-School Unixy Way With Shell Accounts

Borax Man <[email protected]> writes:

> ["Followup-To:" header set to alt.culture.usenet.]
> On 2025-03-22, yeti <[email protected]> wrote:
>> [email protected] (Paul W. Schleck) wrote:
>>
>>> "One reason to sign up for a shell account is that shell providers
>>> often have friendly user communities.
>>
>> (*) Most neighbours I have in pubnixens are just silent, but the few
>> that are not are worth staying.
>>
>
> I signed up to one or two, and that was my experience.  The *idea* was
> cool, but no one was really there.  The fundamental problem, I think, is
> its not a real community.  Its people who want to use a particular
> technology, but don't share any other interest.  It's like starting a
> group for people who like to meet in community centres.  Once you're
> there, then what?  You've already achieved your goal?  The Gemini
> community had the same problem.  They just liked the idea of using
> Gemini.  That doesn't make what you have to say more interesting.
>
> It was basically, at least to me, people who liked to use a particular
> means to an ends, but actually had no ends.  I do understand that the
> communication format does matter (part of the appeal of Usenet to me),
> but you need more than a shared desire to use the same format.  At least
> on Usenet, you can find others with similar interests.

This makes perfect sense and matches my experience as well.  That's why
I think that smaller communities should also peer USENET groups---the
ones that the smaller community cares about.  (It would be useful
already even if the peering is read-only.)  Let's say you have a small
NNTP community with a few of your friends.  You set up an NNTP server
for your local private groups---secrets you guys share.  Now you have a
small world (your community) and a big world (the USENET).  If your
small NNTP server also lets all of you watch the USENET, that makes your
small community more interesting because now you check the USENET from
it: so you don't miss any articles that eventually come in your small
community.  You know what I mean?

Because one of the problems of small communities is precisely
that---nothing happens there.  So importing a tiny piece of the big
community would help to keep the small one engaging.

Even though I use the super Gnus NNTP client, I don't know how to post
the same article to groups on different servers---that would be useful
to share the same post on the big community and also give a chance to my
small community to discuss it too (separately).

Also, when I see an interesting article on the USENET, sometimes I would
reply to follow it up on my small community, for an internal discussion.
It's not easy to do that with my super NNTP client.  I must copy the
article, compose a new one on the small community, paste it and still
add my comment... It's not convenient.

I think the USENET is a great source of things to discuss, but I don't
always want to discuss it on the USENET itself.

>>> Many providers have their own IRC, Usenet, or bulletin boards where
>>> users can exchange messages.
>>
>> ...plus fediverse, too many different link aggregators and short message
>> like media, local or pubnix network wide bulletin boards, Gitea and Cgit
>> ... short: Too many services competing for users.  That yields lots of
>> sub-crowds with far to few comminication.
>>
>> The too many services trap.

Quite right!