Re: Netnews: The Origin Story

On Wed, 7 Nov 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

This is the truth! As a thought experiment I sometimes think about how I
would be able to handle usenet if it had 10x the nr of posts, and I don't
think I would.
>
It would have to be either a laser focus on a very small nr of groups, or
aggressive filtering of the subject lines.

>
True, although in desperation for content my focus has expanded to
lurking in groups I'm barely interested in. I might not mind
needing to narrow my focus back a lot.

Same for me.

I don't know how else I would be able to handle 10x the content.

>
What I don't know is how people handle 10x this content on popular
Web forums. On Usenet you can skip through things quickly with an
interface of your choice. On a Web forum just ten new threads in
five sub-forums are a chore to navigate through, and then you have
things like "mega" threads that are hundreds of pages of flat
posts. I've never worked out how people cope with those, let alone
prefer them!

Well, I grant you that with my terminal based, key driven interface, I breeze through posts way, way quicker than a web forum. But even that is not enough if the content would be 10x.