David Barr <barr(_at_)visi(_dot_)com> writes:
Six years ago we all thought Usenet would die unless we did something
quickly to bring it up to modern standards. I think now most of us
realize that Usenet is dying almost entirely because of its innate
nature, not of any feature or improvement now on the table. The web
offers much more control, flexibility, and interactivity, one which
Usenet by it's nature can't. Usenet is great, but it's not a blog and
it shouldn't try to be. (Aren't mailing lists dying at a rate at least
as high as Usenet, too?)
Both demand for and use of newsgroups and mailing lists has been growing
here at Stanford, mailing lists more so than newsgroups. The attempts
that have been made to convert popular local newsgroups to web-based fora
have failed miserably.
YMMV.
blog/LiveJournal strikes me more as a completely new phenomenon, not a
replacement for any other existing communications medium. Both suffer
from the standard problem that /. also has, namely that maintaining any
sort of extended and thoughtful discussion is essentially impossible,
which means that both have their best niche in presentation of "news"
(whether of general interest or only about a particular person), with
possibly some scattered, mostly superficial comments.
But if you want to see the future of Usenet technology in my view of
things, go to <http://www.gmane.org/>.
--
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>