Would every post go to everyone on the mailing list then? That would
feel like forcing conversations on people. At least with Usenet I can
choose which post to engage with based on the title and/or poster.
Would every post go to everyone on the mailing list then? That would
feel like forcing conversations on people. At least with Usenet I can
choose which post to engage with based on the title and/or poster.
No, I did the same thing. It let me make a comment but as soon as I did, I got >an email telling me my comment had been deleted because I hadn't built up >enough 'karma' to be worthy of speaking, whatever the hell that means.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, like Usenet exists anywhere else on the internet. >The fact that it's so sparsely populated these days is probably the only >reason it still exists. If it were to suddenly become popular and well known, >those government censors I mentioned above would probably ban it.
Can you imagine (a) how long it would have taken for most of us to
reach that level and (b) how easy it would be for the bots to reach
that level? Whatever else it is, it's not an effective anti-bot
method.
The answer is Reddit, IMO. I just have never had the time to figure out
how to set up a (new) Reddit, because r/television absolutely sucks. You >want to set up a kind of smallish general television Reddit (call it
r/RATV or something...) and let everyone here know about it.
What would be different, of course, is that it would have moderator(s). >That's a double-edged sword, of course. But I think with Reddit's model, >it's unavoidable.
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then.
It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through >accounts quickly.
It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in
open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe >Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
I think a lot of whether you use Usenet has to do with how long you've
been doing home computing in general.
Back in the early '90s in my pre-internet days I used local BBS's which
was the only way to interact with the outside world (this was done on
my Mac with an app called ZTerm; there were probably several of them
for the PC). One of the BBS's had a gateway to Usenet which is how I
first discovered it.
A server doesn't have to carry all the hierarchies. If I set one up, I'd >probably only do the text groups. I'm okay with binaries if I have tons
of storage, but if I don't, the user network itself can still be
carried.
On Mon, 18 May 2026 14:40:21 -0400, The True Melissa ><thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then. >>It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through >>accounts quickly.
LLMs? That's a new acronym to me and thankfully we've seen few bozos
in the last 3-5 years...
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in >>open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe >>Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
On Sun, 24 May 2026 10:10:30 -0700, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:
On Mon, 18 May 2026 14:40:21 -0400, The True Melissa
<thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
It was a fine anti-bot method before LLMs. Bots were much dumber then.
It's also supposed to be an anti-bozo measure. Bozos often blow through
accounts quickly.
LLMs? That's a new acronym to me and thankfully we've seen few bozos
in the last 3-5 years...
Large language model. Think the current craze for chatbots.
It's not that hard for a human being to earn karma by participating in
open subs. I just checked my Reddit karma for the first time in ages,
and it stands at 164,982. I have never engaged in any karma farming.
That happened all by itself, by participating naturally over time.
I prefer Usenet because I believe voting is toxic, but I don't believe
Reddit is exclusionary. It's easy to get started, and the biggest subs
are free-for-alls with no requirements.
On Sun, 3 May 2026 06:41:54 -0400, The True Melissa <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
A server doesn't have to carry all the hierarchies. If I set one up, I'd
probably only do the text groups. I'm okay with binaries if I have tons
of storage, but if I don't, the user network itself can still be
carried.
True - though I've been using EasyNews for years and would probably be
SOL if it ever went down - while they're primarily about binaries they
also do text so when my ISP took down their Usenet service I redid my
Agent links to EasyNews. (Text newsgroups of course take a tiny
fraction of the disk space binaries do)
| Sysop: | Scott Duensing |
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