I really don't understand why Usenet died out, when the replacements were all worse.
Better or worse has multidimensional factors.
You have to separate out what some techies like vs what the typical web surfer likes. Usenet doesn't have:
1) upvote/downvote and algorithmic ranking -- which is what Digg and Reddit were good at. Typical web surfers like to see the most upvoted stories and most upvoted comments. In contrast on Usenet, it requires a separate newsgroup reader and configuring filters and manual curation. This is too much techie work for regular folks that want a quick dopamine hit of random web content.
2) good spam control. No system is perfect but web forums like reddit and HN have less spam than Usenet.
3) rich text and formatting. The private web-based forums software like vBulletin and PhpBB are good at this. E.g. upload photos, add colorful smiley faces, avatars, etc.
4) no easy way to be "lurker" with Usenet (at least in the 1990s). To retrieve the latest Usenet posts, your newsgroup reader software had to have an "account id". Reddit and HN don't need any sign up just to read posts; just point the browser at a url. Therefore, instant gratification.
Usenet is "worse" in some dimensions when considering multiple dimensions of convenience and usability.
Yes, Usenet is better on some dimensions such as offline reading and non-central ownership. However, I think we can agree that typical web surfers don't care about those attributes.
On rich text... Well, while I welcome an org-mode-formatted usenet I still do not see any point in having text formatting capabilities, most of formatted text on the web looks really ugly and it does not help reading. Also if we re-learn to write down text in terms of formatting (for instance knowing that more than 80 columns start to be hard to read, using short URLs etc), with the classic netiquette rules we write down better contents, and perhaps with more attention. Try only to compare readability of modern web-platforms respect of ancient usenet posts in a good client and also compare the "medium quality" of posts. Photos can be a problem often circumvented by base64-encode stuff, fidocad etc, however when you really need to insert an image or video in something you post?
On upvotes, well personally I think gamification in general as a really bad idea and in general anything that pave the way to aggregators a bad idea. To let ideas, thoughts flow without soft-censorship we need to control us, individually, our information flow. That's why I favor RSS/Atom instead of modern aggregators, that's why I dislike HN interface etc.
Generally speaking if you make a business well you have to follow or try to drive client's interests but if you make a free software o technical stuff you have to do what you think it's technically best, didactically best. Think for instance about child educations, or simpler think about Ubuntu's Unity desktop: nearly all of us GNU/Linux users from few years before Unity we start to put "launchers" on left or right side of the screen simply because we feel the need of more vertical space and we know that too long/big launchers list it's practically unuseful like having classic dummy users forest of desktop icons, we all have ha small top bar from Fluxbox to Gnome or Enlightenment. Unity devs see this and "force a bit" their users to choose this superior model. At first it was not much welcomed, now it's "The Standard" of modern GNU/Linux desktop, same for "hit a key, type something, hit enter on first mach" workflow vs classic menu-based searches. That's "education". Usenet is about users, a free software/protocol, not a commercial product.
Of course it have rooms for improvements, but improvements does not means reinvent the wheel in a limited and anti-users way.
Refresh my memory, but upvoting wasn't even a thing until sites made commercial decisions to implement it.
No system is perfect but web forums like reddit and HN have less spam than Usenet
I'd like to see the numbers behind this assertion.
your newsgroup reader software had to have an "account id"
???
A lot of this sounds like hindsight bias and just-so stories to me.
I believe most common web forums like PHPBB had voting or something like it. Even imageboards have implicit "voting" by bumping threads with the latest comment to the top.
In addition, bumping was more of a way to get attention to something than to vote. As when asking for help on a specific topic, or to let other users know you edited and added to a thread's initial post.
Plenty of typical web surfers care about non-central ownership. But they care about non-central ownership of the things that they like to do online.
What usually happens instead is someone implements a distributed system that can shuttle data in a way that is functionally equivalent to data shuttling which currently relies on a centralized service. Hooray!
Then they write nice documentation that explains to the typical web surfer how exciting it is to go out of band and whitewash a fence.
Typical web surfers interpret that as brain damage and surf away from it.
usenet is text-based and normally used with a desktop client. People start to see colorful webapps and go for them without thinking. Consider that most "web users" now do not really know the difference between a browser and a webapp. Do not care about freedom as long as they feel free.
It's the classic Chomsky frog, now water start to be a bit hot but still ok for most people, when it will boil... It will be simply too late to came back.
An example scenario, GMail now is a semi-standard mail service (not really standard IMAP but can work with substantially any MUA) and a WebUI. If most people only know WebUI and tomorrow Alphabet decide to drop external IMAP+smtp support? If after decide to make service paid? What you have in hand with all your messages on Google servers? Another scenario, what if a government start to censor? Usenet can be blocked (and blocks circumvented) but still no one can really own it. A proprietary platform can be owned. Even if you have the code you still need server, users etc, with usenet you only need your PC.
>People start to see colorful webapps and go for them without thinking.
Don't describe common users as ignorant sheep or children who grasp at software because of the colors.
The rest of your comment is fine but we don't need any more elitism here.
That's the difference between trying (and regularly fail) to be idiot-proof and trying to say "hey guys! You have to learn! It's easy, a bit long, and we can help, that's the path".
Do not forget the ancient and still actual Internet Manifesto, old IT was open to anyone willing to learn, elitist only with people who are not willing to learn.
Commerce use those people and common ignorance as a way to spread, impose a system nice for making money. In few countries, most anglophone, they manage to tweak the pre-exsisting culture of respect to create a "right to be ignorant" and "prize of ignorance" simply just to win there, in other countries they choose other paths like "comfort" (buy from us and all work without study or setup effort) or "need of expert" etc. It's elitism say "masses can't learn", it is not saying "masses are ignorant" (NOT in an insulting sense), that's simply a truth and since is not what most people describe as a good thing we have to remark and fight it, trying to avoid that problem make things worse and we have plenty of real life proof.
I much prefer modern forums to usenet. And I'm sitting on a whole bunch of CS degrees.
IMVHO this is the problem of modern school systems, in the past they teach, they form thinking peoples, now they form only Ford-model workers, at any level, they do what they can to avoid people learn "the big picture", became autonomous thinker.
Or perhaps the child won't be interested in any of that and will gravitate towards something else entirely, like playing music or playing sports.
The role of a parent is to initiate the child to the world. Past a certain point, the parent must take a step back and realize the child is a human being with it's own set of preferences and ambition. That doesn't mean the child is a king, but if the child is not interested in something, then what can you do?
If not, why at schools we teach geography, math, mother language, sexual education, civil education, ... I'm pretty sure not all children are interested in all this fields. Of course a good teacher do it's best not only to merely transfer knowledge but also to create interest and that's a really difficult task.
Now I have no doubt that a typical child grow up in contemporary society is more interested in smart-devices and colorful webapps instead of PCs and text-based stuff, it's up to a serious parent who know the tech to create interest and tell the child why smart devices are not good stuff and so webapps. This of course does not means train the child as an IT professional if he or she is not interested in that, but give enough knowledge to protect himself from actual society trends. Not much different than saying to be careful with adult stranger, to be careful when crossing road, swim at the sea etc. Maybe not exactly pleasant but that's the life.
If I go to Google Images and search "usenet" it looks more like an FTP program than any sort of "social" website or social anything.
It might be a case of people just not getting or knowing that Usenet is in fact a "social bulletin board" of sorts?
Usenet was designed in a time when the Internet was only used by a tiny number of people, all of whom depended on prestigious institutions for their access to it and thus had strong motivations to not to abuse that access (since doing so would be something like career suicide). Many core assumptions in its design rest fundamentally on this always being true, which today it very much is not.
Spam is a symptom of our social degradation, and it's not a thing of usenet nor internet nor IT, it's about our society that reforms schools to form Ford-model workers at any level because they are easier to manage, that promote ignorance just to sell more stuff etc. Something that ANY communication free, user-centric, platform, usenet included, can contribute to reduce. When we are citizens we tend to be honest (on average), when we are consumers we tend to be raw and the right answer we all know that's not put "more cops" like in the prohibitionist era in the US or Victorian era in UK but empower people. We know even from today's data, there are more unwanted teenage pregnancies in US state with "chastity tendency" than in countries like French or Sweden with a strong sexual education at school, there are more violence in "strong police" (sorry I do not know how to name it in English) like Russia, USA, UK, Arab world than in "soft police" countries like Swiss.
Someone think that's being child it's easy, pleasant, so a nice selling point, also children are easy to manage so good for managers/politician etc, but there is a problem, children needs parents to live, they can't stand on their foots in the wild.
On a more limited point of view usenet work well enough for any tech savvy user and commerce see no opportunity in developing it, preferring instead push less free and more profitable web tech solutions, so on one side peoples get advertisements of "new colorful, 'featureful' platforms" and on the other nntp client like desktop MUA does not improve in any way.
Take as an example actual MUA for the masses like Thunderbird, they look '90-style, with all limitation of ancient clients, compare to webmail's evolution... Of course we have notmuch, mutt&forks, pine&forks, but they are not for the masses, so vast majority goes for actual pre-made webmail food...
I'm seeing the same problem with blogs. A lot of them use to have decent comments sections but the owners have given up trying to filter out the trolls, spammers, and morons and have disabled comments. There are things that can be done other than just give up.
Abuse aside, there is signal vs noise. The Eternal September will overwhelm any system that cannot self-regulate its own content.