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Comment by MetaWhirledPeas | Hacker News Reader

Discoverability? A novice could type something into Web Crawler and get a forum back as a search result. Then they could click the link and begin reading and participating immediately. Was Usenet ever that easy?

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There was a time when "Groups" was section of google search and they indexed the whole thing.

Think this is still around (at least the groups are) but the interface is terrible. Mailing list-tier

Even easier, no web search needed. All you needed to do was search the group list for relevant terms. All the Usenet clients supported searching the group list. Then you just tick the checkbox and the articles were downloaded.

Much much easier than using a search engine, scrolling through the results which were half ads even in those days, and trying out the 12 different forums you finally found which were even active...

> All you needed to do was search the group list for relevant terms. All the Usenet clients supported searching the group list

- Group list

- Usenet client

Most people had no clue what that stuff was.

That’s another reason why Usenet was better. There was an IQ test to see if you were above 90 just to get going with it.

And Usenet died, to no small degree, because it was heavily populated by snobs.

It never died, it reach a low point of participation about a decade ago, and has slowly been gaining steam again ever since. Some portions of Usenet have always stayed active even through the tough times. As social media dies due to various reasons, people are coming back. Have been for years.

> It never died

interesting, given that all your references to it are in the past tense

GP of the reply chain was referring to how at a point in the past Usenet was allegedly more difficult to access. That's why some of my responses were in the past tense - I was disagreeing about how, back then, it was more difficult to access. Hence the use of the past tense. All in perfectly proper English.

bla bla bla, Usenet died because the "high IQ" (according to you) snobs on it were (are?) annoying as fuck posting these twisted explanations instead of accepting they were wrong about something

There's still time to switch your career path. You don't have to do this.

Exactly. When I got access for the first time in the early 90s it took me a few days to wrap my mind around it but after that I never had trouble finding groups of interest. Tools like search, built in group name searches, etc made it easy

...and about 2% of the population thinks Linux is an awesome OS, easy to use, loves the command line, prefers "grep" to clicking on a search box. Fortunately using an OS doesn't really depend on the participation of others, but a discussion forum that is widely viewed as inferior to some other option quickly succumbs to Metcalfe's law and empties out.

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