Re: If you were to design a netnews protocol today...

George Musk wrote:

 
Just a thought experiment:
if you could/had to make something like a NNTP 2.0 (with no need for 
backwards compatibility) and server and client software for it today, what
would it be like?
In terms of specifications, technologies used, user interface, etc.

Some of the problems with the current Usenet:

1) Transport protocol
NNTP (RFC 3977) does not support notification if something interesting
becomes available.

2) Transported data
The article format (RFC 5536) is very complicated.
But it supports embedding audio and video (with MIME).
And flowed text is possible (RFC 3676).

3) User interface
User interfaces for mobile devices are rare.

4) General
Moderation is absent or complicated.


Because progress with anything related to Usenet is extremely slow,
it is likely not a good idea to come up with something incompatible.

Incompatible protocols like ActivityPub already exist.
They have not replaced Usenet (and likely will not do in the future).


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