On 20/04/24 22:45, Sn!pe wrote:
> The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
>
>> Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
>>
>> Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
>> values.
>>
>> This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
>> almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least
>> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me
>> wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy
>> the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
>>
>> When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will
>> ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
>> they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
>> because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact
>> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
>
> [...]
>
> You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
> free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
> of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
> is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
> will fail.
>

PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
have I made my point?
I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.

immibis <news@immibis.com> wrote:
>On 20/04/24 22:45, Sn!pe wrote:
>> The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
>>
>>> Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
>>>
>>> Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
>>> values.
>>>
>>> This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
>>> almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least
>>> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me
>>> wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy
>>> the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
>>>
>>> When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will
>>> ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
>>> they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
>>> because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact
>>> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
>> free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
>> of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
>> is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
>> will fail.
>>
>
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
>have I made my point?
>I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.

It's only censorship if he's doing it on behalf of Gordon, or if he hits
you upside the head with Gordon.

Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

[...]

> >I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.
>
> It's only censorship if he's doing it on behalf of Gordon,
> or if he hits you upside the head with Gordon.

Gordon is an avowed pacifist, even when a nitwit needs
correction. This does not imply that silly Pizza Boi deserves
any attention whatsoever.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PA, FIBS - Professional Crastinator

My pet rock Gordon just is.

On 5/7/2024 3:03 AM, immibis wrote:
> On 14/04/24 19:55, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) wrote or quoted:
>>> What happened to the young people who wanted to set up a Usenet node?
>>
>>    Bruh, Usenet? Seriously? I thought that shit died out in the 90s,
>>    like, who even uses that anymore? I mean, come on, it's 2024 -
>>    we got way better ways to get our info and connect with people
>>    these days. Why would I even bother setting up some old-school
>>    Usenet server when I got Reddit, Discord, and all these other
>>    modern platforms that are way more user-friendly and relevant?
>>
>>    Like, Usenet was cool back in the day, I guess, but it's just so
>>    outdated now. The interface is clunky, the communities are tiny,
>>    and good luck finding anything useful that isn't buried in a
>>    million random posts. Nah, I'm good - I'll stick to the apps and
>>    sites I already use, where I can actually find the content and
>>    communities I care about. Usenet? That's some boomer shit, man.
>
> Where are these magic apps full of worthwhile non-spam content?

uhm... I know for a fact you also are on mastodon because I follow you
there. That one has quite a lot of worthwhile content and no ads to
speak off.

On 2024-04-17 18:07:39 +0000, SugarBug said:

> On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:39:50 -0000 (UTC)
> doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) wrote:
>
>> Getting high schools to a Usenet project should be
>> the advocacy of everyone here!
>
> Moderated NNTP newsgroups are well-suited to academic environments.
>
> In certain academic and scientific circles much communication is still
> done via email using clients that still have built-in NNTP capability.

When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
just make much more sense, and make many things easier.

Not sure if access to global Usenet would be useful in businness
environment, but local NNTP server is a good idea, in my opinion. I was
never in a position to propose any changes, though.

Quick google search shows that the same thing was proposed many times
in the past, for example, a book Practical Internet Groupware by Jon
Udell starts with a chapter called "Lotus Notes, Web Bulletin Boards,
and NNTP Newsgroups":

<https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-internet-groupware/1565925378/ch01s07.html>

> All that we lacked was our own dedicated news server. When I
installed one—and eventually, several assigned to different roles—we
began to learn what can be done with a dedicated NNTP conferencing
system that operates apart from the worldwide network of replicating
Usenet servers. Conferencing servers are tremendous assets. In Chapter
3 and Chapter 4, I’ll show some of the ways to use them, and in Chapter
13, I’ll show how to install and configure them. But first, let me
anticipate the question you should probably be asking now: “If NNTP
servers are so darned useful, how come hardly anybody seems to use
them?” Thereby hangs a tale.

Not sure what the tale is, it seems that full text of the book is still
unavailable for free.

Here is another article by Jon Udell where he talks about pretty much
the same thing, "Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration":

<https://jonudell.net/GroupwareReport.html>

> This year, the Usenet celebrates its 20th anniversary. It's the
grandfather of all groupware systems: a planetary discussion network
that supports tens of thousands of virtual communities. At their best,
these shared spaces enable groups of like-minded individuals to
collaborate rather effectively. At their worst, they're overrun by
spam, smut, and nonsense. This degradation poisons our notion of the
Usenet and, what's worse, prevents us from fully understanding and
exploiting some really useful, and well-established, collaborative
tools -- NNTP (Net News Transfer Protocol) servers and clients.

> We can, and probably should, re-invent the Usenet. Even when it works
well -- there are, for example, many high-quality moderated Usenet
groups -- its replication scheme has become terribly inefficient. Any
given Usenet node receives and processes vastly more messages than
anyone attached to that node will ever read. Why? When the Usenet grew
up, there was no such thing as a near-universal real-time-connected
data network. Replication was the only way to propagate messages
worldwide over diverse and intermittently-connected networks. Today
newsreaders can connect instantaneously to many different news servers,
just as browsers connect to many different Web sites.
> Let's imagine an alternative Usenet. It has the same number of
virtual communities and the same number of nodes. But each node is
responsible for just one or several shared spaces, not all of them.
(NNTP replication might still mirror nodes to a few locations around
the world, to improve local access, but the storage and processing
costs of replication would be vastly reduced.) When each node processes
vastly fewer messages, the focus can shift from quantity to quality.
Here are some of the implications:
> ...

I wonder what he thinks about NNTP and Usenet now. Seems that he is
still active, perhaps someone can email him or invite him here.

Van Camp <van@ca.mp> writes:

> When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
> them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
> just make much more sense, and make many things easier.

When I worked at Stanford, I set up fairly extensive local newsgroups to
capture all sorts of reports and user requests that started out as email.
I really liked that system, and some of my co-workers did as well, but I
think it mostly or entirely went away after I left.

Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot rarer than
mail clients and don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to
work (on the phone, in particular). When I was at an email-heavy job (I'm
thankfully not any more), I will say that I found a good mobile email
client to be exceptionally good at its job, good enough that I never
bothered to set up Gnus for work email (which is what I usually use to let
me treat email as if it's Usenet). Being able to triage email on the
train is incredibly useful and I'm dubious there's a mobile news client
with the same feature set (although I admit I have not done a ton of
research).

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

Van Camp <van@ca.mp> wrote:
> On 2024-04-17 18:07:39 +0000, SugarBug said:
>
> > On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:39:50 -0000 (UTC)
> > doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca (The Doctor) wrote:
> >
> >> Getting high schools to a Usenet project should be
> >> the advocacy of everyone here!
> >
> > Moderated NNTP newsgroups are well-suited to academic environments.
> >
> > In certain academic and scientific circles much communication is still
> > done via email using clients that still have built-in NNTP capability.
>
> When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
> them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
> just make much more sense, and make many things easier.
>
> Not sure if access to global Usenet would be useful in businness
> environment, but local NNTP server is a good idea, in my opinion. I was
> never in a position to propose any changes, though.

That - a company-local NetNews server - is exactly what we/I did,
already in the very early 80s (till at least 2003). We carried
company-internal newsgroups, some company-related Usenet newsgroups - as
an alternative (informal) customer support channel - and some other
Usenet groups (by an automatic on-demand feed mechanism (storage was
still small/expensive at the time)).

But like in the non-company world, NetNews/Usenet was somewhat of a
niche and most others (ab)used e-mail where NetNews/Usenet would have
been a much better fit. In our company, it was mostly used by techies,
not by marketing/sales, admin, etc..

Bottom line: You/I/'we' are preaching to the converted. :-( c.q. :-)

> Quick google search shows that the same thing was proposed many times
> in the past, for example, a book Practical Internet Groupware by Jon
> Udell starts with a chapter called "Lotus Notes, Web Bulletin Boards,
> and NNTP Newsgroups":
>
> <https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-internet-groupware/1565925378/ch01s07.html>

[...]

On 5/14/24 10:49, Van Camp wrote:
> When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
> them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups.

Ignorance and / or requirements.

Most people don't know about news groups. Most of those that do know
about news groups equate it with Usenet. I hope that we can all agree
that general unfiltered Usenet is not a good thing for businesses.

Most businesses had (access to) an email server. Having (access to)
that email server was a business need as in it provided tangible
benefits to the organization. Few of those businesses also had (access
to) a private news group server.

People tend to make the tools that they have work. Adding a little
inefficiency to the solution at hand, email, was more efficient for them
than acquiring (access to) another server / service.

> Local newsgroups just make much more sense, and make many things
> easier.

I agree.

> Not sure if access to global Usenet would be useful in businness
> environment, but local NNTP server is a good idea, in my opinion. I was
> never in a position to propose any changes, though.

Agreed on the first two accounts. About 20 years ago I mentioned Usenet
to my counterpart, the Windows admin, and he was intrigued. He added
NNTP support to the Exchange server and we dabbled with it. I think
that he and I were starting to embrace it, but the other two business
partners / owners were confused with how it differed from email and why
it was better than email. Not long afterwards, discussions gravitated
back towards email again.

--
Grant. . . .

On 5/14/24 12:02, Russ Allbery wrote:
> When I worked at Stanford, I set up fairly extensive local newsgroups
> to capture all sorts of reports and user requests that started out
> as email. I really liked that system, and some of my co-workers did
> as well, but I think it mostly or entirely went away after I left.

I can't say as I'm surprised.

I've long viewed Usenet / NNTP as an early form of publish / subscribe
information destination.

If I was in a position to do so, I'd have various things publish current
status as articles to newsgroups specifically for the devices. Then
consumers could subscribe to the newsgroups (as a proxy for the devices)
they are interested in.

I think this could be especially germane if there was a way to expire /
cancel / supersede so that the current status was easily reference. I
/think/ there is some capability to do exactly this in NNTP. It's just
that this capability isn't used in Usenet in general, for -- hopefully
-- obvious security implications.

> Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot
> rarer than mail clients ...

I'd agree with and raise you that fat mail clients aren't nearly as
popular as they once were.

IMHO a web mail client is a poor excuse for an email client.

> ... don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to work (on
> the phone, in particular).

I question that.

Mostly because I think people are largely ignorant of many aspects of
communications.

Now people will probably liken a Usent article to a posting on some
social media site. Go there, read it there, and comment there.

> When I was at an email-heavy job (I'm thankfully not any more), I
> will say that I found a good mobile email client to be exceptionally
> good at its job, good enough that I never bothered to set up Gnus for
> work email (which is what I usually use to let me treat email as if
> it's Usenet).
I think that a good email client is a very valuable thing. As indicated
above, web based email clients aren't good by any stretch of the
imagination.

> Being able to triage email on the train is incredibly useful and
> I'm dubious there's a mobile news client with the same feature set
> (although I admit I have not done a ton of research).

Experiencing a good, rather than bad, email client is an eye opener.
Experiencing that on mobile is awe inspiring.

No, I don't consider what I'm currently using to be good. At best it's
the least evil.

--
Grant. . . .

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> writes:
> On 5/14/24 12:02, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot rarer
>> than mail clients ...

> I'd agree with and raise you that fat mail clients aren't nearly as
> popular as they once were.

Except on the phone. I suppose you could use webmail from a phone, but I
don't think people do nearly as much.

> IMHO a web mail client is a poor excuse for an email client.

It depends very much on what you want to do with it. At my last job, I
just used the Gmail web client (and various mobile clients) the whole time
I worked there for all work mail (which was very high-volume). It worked
great. And I'm a fairly technically sophisticated user who uses probably
the most sophisticated fat mail client (apart from HTML rendering)
currently available.

Lots of people just use Gmail's web client. It's fine. It even has a lot
of the capabilities that you would expect in a fat client, such as very
rich filtering, although its filtering syntax is pretty weird. And so
many other people use the Gmail web client that messages generally look
good in the Gmail web client, which sometimes matters.

It's bad at sending the sort of messages that we prefer on Usenet, but no
one really expects that at organizations that use Gmail and they all send
messages in a way that works well on Gmail (at least in my experience).
It's different, and it has various tradeoffs, but work got done just
fine. One of the things that does is push document smithing and extensive
comments *out* of email and into a documentation collaboration platform of
one form or another, and honestly, that's a lot better anyway.

>> ... don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to work (on the
>> phone, in particular).

> I question that.

> Mostly because I think people are largely ignorant of many aspects of
> communications.

Sure, and in fact they *do not want to know* about many aspects of
communications because there are more things in this world than anyone has
time to learn in a lifetime, and they have lives and hobbies and other
shit that they want to do with their time. What they know are the things
they want to do with their email, and that includes doing a lot of it on
their phone.

> I think that a good email client is a very valuable thing. As indicated
> above, web based email clients aren't good by any stretch of the
> imagination.

None of this stuff is "good" or "bad" in some uniform absolute way. It
all depends on what you want to do with it.

I still use a web-based email client for work (a considerably worse one
than Gmail's), because I mostly don't use email for my job at all, I read
work email about once a week, and the only task that I need to do in it is
go through and skim and delete a bunch of messages and send an email maybe
once a month. Is that email ugly HTML top-posted crap? Yes, it is. I
cannot be bothered to do anything else given how little I use it and how
much I dislike setting up IMAP, and no one cares.

I really like my rich email client, but it's just not worth the afternoon
it would take to set it up to talk to my work email server (and all the
drawbacks of comingling work email with personal email, or an even more
complicated project of setting up multiple clients). Not having to set up
a client is a huge benefit for me that turns out to matter more to me than
the web UI. Which is, let me be clear, utterly godawful, but I only use
it once a week and I only use like four buttons in the UI, so who cares.

Anyway, there are a whole host of issues with Usenet, but one of them is
that it's just not very accessible to the average person because
technology has moved on and there isn't a huge demand or developer base to
write nice mobile clients and zero-install clients and to think really
hard about optimizing workflows. And that's fine! Not every technology
has to be at the middle of the daily lives of a mass audience, and in fact
it can be very uncomfortable to be in that position.

Incidentally, if you want blocks of text to look good on the phone, you
pretty much have to use one of the other things Usenet folks love to hate:
HTML messages. The way you get all the text flowing to work properly with
wildly different screen sizes is that you outsource all that work to an
HTML rendering engine, which is an obscenely complex piece of software
that you then don't have to write. Not saying that Usenet should use
HTML! I kind of like that it doesn't because I'm an old fossil. But
there are reasons for these technology choices, and they all interact.

Is HTML the best way to do this in theory? Absolutely not! It has tons
of problems! But it's already there, everyone knows how to use it, most
of email is in HTML these days anyway, and there are millions of people
and entire industries devoted to making HTML look good. It's very, very
hard for a theoretically better alternative to compete with that.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
> I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
> whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?

The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy discussion
off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is one of these
people. He has never denied being Hamas.

> There was something about good money being displaced by bad, and while it
> does not apply to bullion money for various reasons, it does apply to
> debates. Bad arguments displace good arguments when both are given equal,
> rather than due, weight, because they are propounded more insistently
> (have you ever seen Alex Jones?), and I've seen this time and time again.
> This is why moderation is needed when there are arguments - to flag up
> obvious bad arguments and bad ways of arguing, and ensure that bad
> arguments cannot displace good.

immibis <news@immibis.com> wrote:

> On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
> > I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
> > whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?
>
> The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy discussion
> off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is one of these
> people. He has never denied being Hamas.
>

Prick. Crosspost and Followup set to where this belongs.

> >
> > There was something about good money being displaced by bad, and while it
> > does not apply to bullion money for various reasons, it does apply to
> > debates. Bad arguments displace good arguments when both are given equal,
> > rather than due, weight, because they are propounded more insistently
> > (have you ever seen Alex Jones?), and I've seen this time and time again.
> > This is why moderation is needed when there are arguments - to flag up
> > obvious bad arguments and bad ways of arguing, and ensure that bad
> > arguments cannot displace good.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PA, FIBS - Professional Crastinator

My pet rock Gordon just is.

On 15/05/2024 23:07, immibis wrote:
> On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
>> I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
>> whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?
>
> The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy
> discussion off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is
> one of these people. He has never denied being Hamas.
>
What is wrong with being Hamas?

On 5/14/24 19:55, Russ Allbery wrote:
> It depends very much on what you want to do with it. At my last job,
> I just used the Gmail web client (and various mobile clients) the whole
> time I worked there for all work mail (which was very high-volume).
> It worked great. And I'm a fairly technically sophisticated user who
> uses probably the most sophisticated fat mail client (apart from HTML
> rendering) currently available.

I too used Gmail at my last job and I hated it and found it very limiting.

> Lots of people just use Gmail's web client. It's fine.

I disagree.

> It even has a lot of the capabilities that you would expect in a fat
> client, such as very rich filtering, although its filtering syntax
> is pretty weird.

I found it's filtering capabilities to be quite limiting. Both in what
could be filtered on and how you could use them in combination.

It couldn't even touch on modifying messages.

> And so many other people use the Gmail web client that messages
> generally look good in the Gmail web client, which sometimes matters.

Sometimes following the herd is a bad thing.

> I still use a web-based email client for work (a considerably worse
> one than Gmail's), because I mostly don't use email for my job at all,
> I read work email about once a week, and the only task that I need to
> do in it is go through and skim and delete a bunch of messages and send
> an email maybe once a month. Is that email ugly HTML top-posted crap?
> Yes, it is. I cannot be bothered to do anything else given how little
> I use it and how much I dislike setting up IMAP, and no one cares.

Some people care.

Not enough people caring is a symptom of a different problem.

> I really like my rich email client, but it's just not worth the
> afternoon it would take to set it up to talk to my work email server
> (and all the drawbacks of comingling work email with personal email,
> or an even more complicated project of setting up multiple clients).

So don't co-mingle accounts.

> Not having to set up a client is a huge benefit for me that turns
> out to matter more to me than the web UI. Which is, let me be clear,
> utterly godawful, but I only use it once a week and I only use like
> four buttons in the UI, so who cares.

Apparently not you.

> Incidentally, if you want blocks of text to look good on the phone,
> you pretty much have to use one of the other things Usenet folks love
> to hate: HTML messages.

format=flowed ASCII text does that perfectly fine. No need for HTML.

> Not saying that Usenet should use HTML!

format=flowed works perfectly fine with Usenet.

> But it's already there, everyone knows how to use it,

I question the veracity of that.

They know how to type and that what they type comes out the other side.
I bet the vast majority of those people have no idea that HTML is being
used under the hood.

People that don't do any formatting would be perfectly fine with text
email. But most of the web email clients take pure text and force it to
HTML.

> most of email is in HTML these days anyway,

More herd following.

> and there are millions of people and entire industries devoted to
> making HTML look good. It's very, very hard for a theoretically
> better alternative to compete with that.

Nonsense. It just needs to be bigger, worse, more gaudy, and draw
specific people's attention. People will start to flock to it in
droves. But it will be worse than the current thing.

--
Grant. . . .

Hassan Nasrallah wrote:
>
> On 15/05/2024 23:07, immibis wrote:
> > On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
> >> I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
> >> whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?
> >
> > The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy
> > discussion off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is
> > one of these people. He has never denied being Hamas.
> >
> What is wrong with being Hamas?

They got smelly feet.

immibis wrote:
>
> On 20/04/24 22:45, Sn!pe wrote:
> > The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning <zerda@umbrellix.net> top-posted:
> >
> >> Understand that we don't believe we would necessarily fail.
> >>
> >> Instead, the values of this network do not and cannot align with my
> >> values.
> >>
> >> This is why I am demotivated. The technical challenge is surmountable,
> >> almost easy, in my estimation. I recommend everyone give it a go, at least
> >> to start a private, non-Usenet NNTP forum. The social challenge makes me
> >> wonder if I should not instead try to come to command an army and destroy
> >> the entire network, collateral damage be damned.
> >>
> >> When I come across Usenet admins, they cannot clearly say that they will
> >> ban and filter anyone they come across committing harassment, nor that
> >> they will institute a code of conduct which is actively antifascist,
> >> because the values of the network are not actively antifascist and in fact
> >> tend towards calling antifascists whiners.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
> > free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
> > of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
> > is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
> > will fail.
> >
>
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA
> PINEAPPLE BELONGS ON PIZZA

Mmmmmm. I quite fancy a Hawaiian pizza now.

> have I made my point?

That you're a twit?

> I am sure you won't killfile me, because that would be censorship.

Sn!pe wrote:

> You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
> free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
> of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
> is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
> will fail.

Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations, Usenet is not
remotely an example of free speech—newsserver admins can freely downshut
anything they don't like, and many servers require a fee to use,
prohibiting the impoverished from using them.

The conceptualization of discussion as “debates” to be “won” is
regressive. All members of a discussion come in with the goal of
expanding their knowledge, and whether or not their original position upon
entrance is correct or not is wholly irrelevant to the final outcome.

--
Blue-Maned_Hawk│shortens to Hawk│/blu.mɛin.dʰak/│he/him/his/himself/Mr.
blue-maned_hawk.srht.site
The painter may paint in whatever shades he likes, but his painting cannot
be displayed in public if the paints he uses are carcinogenic.

Blue-Maned_Hawk <bluemanedhawk@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Sn!pe wrote:
>
> > You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
> > free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
> > of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
> > is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
> > will fail.
>
> Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations, Usenet is not
> remotely an example of free speech?newsserver admins can freely downshut
> anything they don't like, and many servers require a fee to use,
> prohibiting the impoverished from using them.

News server admins *can* indeed shut down anything they don't like,
but very few - if any - actually do. Quite the opposite, some of them
'allow' (by not taking action), posts which are clearly meant to
disrupt/distroy the group, stifle - instead of enable - discussion,
etc.. So don't worry about "free speech" on Usenet.

BTW, "the impoverished"!? You're joking, right!? The other stuff they
need to read/post - computer, Internet access, power, etc. - also cost
money. And several servers are free to use and there are several very
low cost paid options. (Mine is EUR 10 per *year*.)

> The conceptualization of discussion as ?debates? to be ?won? is
> regressive. All members of a discussion come in with the goal of
> expanding their knowledge, and whether or not their original position upon
> entrance is correct or not is wholly irrelevant to the final outcome.

Correct, but many people think and talk in terms of winning and
losing, even when they don't really mean that. Feel free to use your own
terms.

Blue-Maned_Hawk <bluemanedhawk@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Sn!pe wrote:

>>You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
>>free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
>>of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
>>is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
>>will fail.

>Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations,

Free speech and censorship are concepts related to action by GOVERNMENT,
not by individuals. Under United States law, speech by individuals is
unlimited (but there are certain restrictions upon false claims made in
advertisement in commercial speech). Speech, in and of itself, is never
criminal. There are consequences in very limited circumstances. Person A
may sue Person B for defamation but person B's the extent that Person B's
statement was truthful is always a defense. Defamation isn't merely having
taken offense. In criminal cases, the controlling standard is government
cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to
inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or
produce such action". Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

>Usenet is not remotely an example of free speech-newsserver admins can
>freely downshut anything they don't like, and many servers require a
>fee to use, prohibiting the impoverished from using them.

This is a misunderstanding of the nature of freedom of the press. That
isn't government abridging rights. A News administrator enjoys freedom
of the press because he is providing his own resources. He has set up a
News server and has connected it to the Usenet network. An individual
user does not and cannot enjoy freedom of the press on someone else's
News site. However, if he sets up his own News site, then press freedom
belongs to him.

>The conceptualization of discussion as "debates" to be "won" is
>regressive.

That's meaningless.

>All members of a discussion come in with the goal of
>expanding their knowledge, and whether or not their original position upon
>entrance is correct or not is wholly irrelevant to the final outcome.

That's simply not true at all. Plenty of people willfully post STOOPID
to provoke a reaction with zero interest in honest debate and without
offering well thought out arguments, as you have done in this very
sentence.

On Thu, 16 May 2024 16:18:56 -0000 (UTC), Blue-Maned_Hawk <bluemanedhawk@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Sn!pe wrote:
>> You appear to be advocating censorship. Usenet is a rare bastion of
>> free speech. All shades of opinion are given equal weight in the court
>> of its readership, including those opinions that some do not like. This
>> is in the nature of debate. Valid arguments will win debates, others
>> will fail.
>
>Ignoring the fact that even free speech has limitations, Usenet is not
>remotely an example of free speech�newsserver admins can freely downshut
>anything they don't like, and many servers require a fee to use,
>prohibiting the impoverished from using them.

read-only test of some free news servers (using Tor Browser 13.0.15):

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=paganini.bofh.team&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: paganini.bofh.team (48696)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=freenews.netfront.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: freenews.netfront.net (47473)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.samoylyk.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.samoylyk.net (45909)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.dizum.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.dizum.net (45728)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.alphared.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.alphared.net (45728)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.blueworldhosting.com&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.blueworldhosting.com (45059)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.novabbs.org&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.novabbs.org (42485)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.i2pn2.org&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.i2pn2.org (42473)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.mixmin.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.mixmin.net (41841)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.alt119.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.alt119.net (40530)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.usenet.ovh&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.usenet.ovh (15322)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=gallaxial.com&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: gallaxial.com (5504)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.chmurka.net&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.chmurka.net (3752)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.grc.com&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.grc.com (39)

http://put.hk/reader.jsp?server=news.eternal-september.org&btnsubmit=Go
>Server: news.eternal-september.org (12) *requires login, tor disabled

there are probably dozens of other free news servers, some of which
are known to work with tor and also use ssl/port 563, albeit posting
via some of these free news servers may not work with or without tor;

see also:
>List of Free Usenet Servers: https://sybershock.com/#usenet

On 16/05/2024 10:28, William Stickers wrote:
> Hassan Nasrallah wrote:
>> On 15/05/2024 23:07, immibis wrote:
>>> On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
>>>> I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
>>>> whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?
>>> The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy
>>> discussion off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is
>>> one of these people. He has never denied being Hamas.
>>>
>> What is wrong with being Hamas?
> They got smelly feet.
How do you know that? Do you go around sniffing people's feet?

Hassan Nasrallah wrote:
>
> On 16/05/2024 10:28, William Stickers wrote:
> > Hassan Nasrallah wrote:
> >> On 15/05/2024 23:07, immibis wrote:
> >>> On 21/04/24 03:28, The Bjornsdottirs - Lightning wrote:
> >>>> I am, in fact, advocating censorship. Why shouldn't we censor someone
> >>>> whose "contributions" amount to driving healthy discussion off the 'net?
> >>> The best argument comes down to "Because I am driving healthy
> >>> discussion off the net and I want to continue doing that." Sn!pe is
> >>> one of these people. He has never denied being Hamas.
> >>>
> >> What is wrong with being Hamas?
> > They got smelly feet.
> How do you know that?

They look smelly. Prolly one of the many reasons the Egyptians won't open the
border to them.

> Do you go around sniffing people's feet?

Yuck, no.

William Stickers <bill.stickers@innocent.com> wrote:

[...]

> > >> What is wrong with being Hamas?
> > >
> > > They got smelly feet.
> >
> > How do you know that?
>
> They look smelly. Prolly one of the many reasons
> the Egyptians won't open the border to them.
>
> > Do you go around sniffing people's feet?
>
> Yuck, no.

Ew, Bromodosis. <https://youtu.be/HrmtAQvmfN8>

I think we should make an apology to the denizens of
news.software.nntp at this point and consider taking
this thread to somewhere more appropriate, such as
alt.bjornsdottirs.troll.troll.troll or alt.immibis.smelly.sock

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PA, FIBS - Professional Crastinator

My pet rock Gordon just is.

snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) writes:

> I think we should make an apology to the denizens of
> news.software.nntp at this point

....optional.

> and consider taking this thread to somewhere more appropriate, such as
> alt.bjornsdottirs.troll.troll.troll or alt.immibis.smelly.sock

There may be other choices too, just do it.

--
I do not bite, I just want to play.

Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> wrote at 17:02 this Tuesday (GMT):
> Van Camp <van@ca.mp> writes:
>
>> When I was working at different companies, I always wondered why all of
>> them use mailing lists instead of local newsgroups. Local newsgroups
>> just make much more sense, and make many things easier.
>
> When I worked at Stanford, I set up fairly extensive local newsgroups to
> capture all sorts of reports and user requests that started out as email.
> I really liked that system, and some of my co-workers did as well, but I
> think it mostly or entirely went away after I left.
>
> Part of the problem these days is that news clients are a lot rarer than
> mail clients and don't work in all the ways that people expect mail to
> work (on the phone, in particular). When I was at an email-heavy job (I'm
> thankfully not any more), I will say that I found a good mobile email
> client to be exceptionally good at its job, good enough that I never
> bothered to set up Gnus for work email (which is what I usually use to let
> me treat email as if it's Usenet). Being able to triage email on the
> train is incredibly useful and I'm dubious there's a mobile news client
> with the same feature set (although I admit I have not done a ton of
> research).

Yeah, it seems the only "mainstream" NNTP client is Thunderbird..
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom