r/ClassicUsenet

r/ClassicUsenet is seeking an additional qualified moderator at this time.

We were created in 2022, currently have about 1400 subscribers, 60 approved users, 18 months of continuous daily posting activity, and are set to Restricted, so our queue is small. Familiarity with text-based discussion Usenet (versus binary downloads) is desired.

(For more information, see our Wiki as well as our pinned posts under Community Highlights.)

>TL;DR: I created a new website (easily used on mobile or desktop) with episode guides for TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, with Tim Lynch's spoiler reviews, short & full synopses, quick rating overviews by Jammer and Algernon_Asimov (where available), and full-text search. Each can be installed as a stand-alone "app" on mobile.

https://gabindu.gitlab.io/trek-guides

I've always been a fan of the original spoiler-reviews posted by Tim Lynch on Usenet, and although they can be found online, they were quite hard to navigate and/or read (especially on mobile) - so I decided to create a new site (with permission by Tim himself). Without changing the actual content, all his posts were reflowed and reformatted, and his end-of-seasons re-reviews were integrated on each page (as popup "knowls") for easy comparison.

As a bonus, I included various things a geek like myself appreciates:

• Screenshots and misc. episode metadata pulled from various sources
• short (spoiler-free) and full synopses
• Jammer's ratings (with links to his full reviews)
• Algernon_Asimov's "Essential?" ratings ("Engage!", "meh", "Just for fun", "Avoid" - shown as icons), where they exist (TNG & DS9)
• full-text search
• keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation (on desktop)

The site is completely ad-free and without monetization. Enjoy!

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.nirvana/c/QLt43x5ibvs/m/XnEJ9BVZA78J

*If you can't see the messages, scroll to the top and click the "Expand All" arrows in the right corner

Here's an old newsgroup discussion about Kurt's death. What an amazing piece of internet history!

This post was inspired by reading Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book (which, by the way, is great). I was confused when I first read it without knowing when it was written, because the society she writes (in the book’s ‘present’, >!not the time travel bit of course!<) feels modern, but a large part of the plot hinges on (very minor spoilers ahead) people not being able to reach each other because the phone lines are blocked or because they’re not at the phone when the other person calls, or the connection cuts etc - even though the phones do have a video screen and you can see the other person. Took me a while to realise it was written well before mobile phones, and while Willis correctly predicted the video calling component, she couldn’t imagine phones being mobile. Reading it now, it’s a bit bemusing.

Any other examples of fun cases like this where the author was kinda right but also kinda wrong? Or just where a tech innovation seems anachronistic now?

* I use the terms prediction and anachronism loosely here - obviously stories are fiction and not trying to predict the future accurately, but this one was amusing to me.

I saw DS9 before I saw TNG, so it was somewhat jarring to see the (perceived) regression of the ferengi in TNG.

I love this community but contributing to reddit seems immoral to me given the way they support AI development and awful site-wide moderation. Is there a community for programmers to ask and receive answers? Kinda like StackOverflow but it's dead so im looking for alternatives.

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They were the first to introduce unlimited NNTP plans more than 20 years ago...I want to subscribe to a provider but did not decide yet, I'm between Easynews and Giganews...

The spoiler tag may be disregarded if you have watched through season 5.

There was a good thread on Mark and Elizabeth today, to which I replied with thoughts on the actors and characters together.

What I later wished I had added: I was an internet-active fan in those days, and I remember a midseason spoiler that Mark was going to find a surprising romance close at hand, within the hospital, or words to that effect.

To give you an idea of how surprising Mark/Elizabeth ultimately was, I don't think a single person guessed her, within a busy newsgroup. (For you very young people, Usenet newsgroups were like the Reddit of the '90s.) Kerry Weaver was considered the leading candidate. That may sound crazy now, but they were getting along well in season 5, and at that point in the series, she'd only been shown in relationships with men (albeit fleeting relationships, Mlungisi and Ellis). Some supporting players such as recurring nurses were runners-up.

My wife is a few years younger than me and was just talking about her high school’s media center. I realized that I never used the internet in high school. It wasn’t until my first year of college in 1995. I remember being taken to a computer lab and getting on Netscape, being told,”This is the internet. Try it out!”

Edit to add: I posted this before work and am just now seeing all the comments! I do remember being shown how to use a BBS service in my high school library, so I guess I technically did use the internet. But it wasn’t until I had AOL (charged by the hour) and Usenet in 1995 that I really understood what was happening. It seems that using the internet in middle/high school is something that most younger Xennials/Millennials had, while I had more of a GenX high school experience.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. We have so many apps, Discords, DMs, servers, communities…

…but somehow meeting genuinely similar people online feels harder than ever.

Why do you think that is?

Is it algorithms? People being fake? Too much clout/flexing? Too many weird interactions? Dead communities? Catfish? Wrong vibe? Or something else?

What’s the real issue in your experience?

I remember when searching for something would take me to a website I'd never heard of before.

Some random forum from 2008. A guy's personal blog, A website that looked like it hadn't been updated in fifteen years.

Now I search for almost anything and it feels like I'm rotating between the same handful of sites over and over again.

The internet is obviously much bigger than it used to be.

It just doesn't feel bigger. It feels like everyone is hanging out in the same few places while millions of smaller sites sit somewhere in the background getting ignored