If you were going to post in a new group it was customary to read the FAQ and/or lurk for a while.
But it's also true that Usenet worked best with A) a lower volume of posts, and B) posters who put effort into proper threading and quoting.
In an ideal world, every new poster would read the FAQ and lurk for a while, then make their best effort to fit into community norms when they start posting. Usenet was born in that idealized "first age" of the internet. But now we are in the Eternal September age (and the age of highly automated spam). We really need highly sophisticated tools of moderation and norm enforcement.
We also need it to be as easy as possible for new, unsophisticated users to get up to speed so they can start contributing. Installing an app from one of the official app stores is just about the most you can ask of new users before you risk bouncing them out the door. News readers (and potentially other tools for managing killfiles, distributed moderation, etc.) are a very big ask. You'd essentially be restricting the community to hard core, tech-savvy folks. And that's a real shame, because some of my favourite subreddits are for non-tech hobbies, where I'd find it unusual for users to have a lot of tech knowledge.
> We also need it to be as easy as possible for new, unsophisticated users to get up to speed so they can start contributing.
If you actually want to replace Reddit, I suppose. But this, too, is a matter of preference. Growing the userbase as quickly as possible is a business concern, and isn't necessarily better for the community itself.
> Installing an app from one of the official app stores is just about the most you can ask of new users before you risk bouncing them out the door ... You'd essentially be restricting the community to hard core, tech-savvy folks.
I think you are overestimating how sophisticated these systems are and underestimating what users are capable of. Plenty of people who were not hard-core tech-savvy IT experts participated in Usenet. There were many, many non-technical newsgroups, and they were quite popular.
All that being said, the blunt truth is that Usenet failed to scale. I think it got a lot of things right (and that we've thrown a lot of baby out with the bathwater in the last 25 years), and certainly we could stand to revisit that in an era where people are groping towards decentralization again. But while it might work for small forums, Usenet cannot support 800 million active users as-is.
If you actually want to replace Reddit, I suppose. But this, too, is a matter of preference. Growing the userbase as quickly as possible is a business concern, and isn't necessarily better for the community itself.
Yes, I actually want to replace Reddit. I want to have communities where people are into hobbies OTHER THAN computing.
I think you are overestimating how sophisticated these systems are and underestimating what users are capable of. Plenty of people who were not hard-core tech-savvy IT experts participated in Usenet. There were many, many non-technical newsgroups, and they were quite popular.
They had no other choice back then. I don't think you'll ever see the success of something as sophisticated as Usenet be duplicated, ever again. Non-technical users will just move to Facebook or Instagram or Discord.
But it's also true that Usenet worked best with A) a lower volume of posts, and B) posters who put effort into proper threading and quoting.
In an ideal world, every new poster would read the FAQ and lurk for a while, then make their best effort to fit into community norms when they start posting. Usenet was born in that idealized "first age" of the internet. But now we are in the Eternal September age (and the age of highly automated spam). We really need highly sophisticated tools of moderation and norm enforcement.
We also need it to be as easy as possible for new, unsophisticated users to get up to speed so they can start contributing. Installing an app from one of the official app stores is just about the most you can ask of new users before you risk bouncing them out the door. News readers (and potentially other tools for managing killfiles, distributed moderation, etc.) are a very big ask. You'd essentially be restricting the community to hard core, tech-savvy folks. And that's a real shame, because some of my favourite subreddits are for non-tech hobbies, where I'd find it unusual for users to have a lot of tech knowledge.