BT Usenet to cease

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Just my experience. Several email lists I've used in the past have died to be replaced by forums. Covering exactly the same things. And the same seems to have happened to News.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I didn't mention quality.

I'm perfectly happy with a plain text medium, but many, it seems, must have pictures with it. Only real reason I can see to prefer a forum to News.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I think there's more to it than that. I've been subscribed to a few email groups which were healthy, but superseded by forums. With exactly the same people subscribing. Both methods need approx the same (lack of) effort to set up and download. Both can be secure and moderated - or not.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In the early days of the internet, many had. Now, why would they bother?

[Chris French]

Well, they could, but they are buisness.

There comes a point where you decide that something's just aren't worth bothering with

[Huge]

A fact which baffles me, given how hideous they are.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Only real difference in practice is you can post pics etc, which may be a plus with certain groups.

[Huge]

You have to download 400kB of avatars, advertising, animated gifs and assorted shit to get what you want to read, most don't have killfiles, nearly all of them have fascist posting policies, they don't scale, there's a single point of failure. They're shit.

[polygonum]

And...

I spend quite some time on a specific forum which is horrible to use. I am only there because of who else is there! There is a torrent of complaints from users.

No point in carrying on with my dissatisfaction! Broadly I agree that most forums are considerably less pleasant to use than Usenet.

[bert]

+1

[stuart noble]

With some notable exceptions, such as Gardenweb.com