On Wed, 21 Jun 2017 18:56:25 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Someone mentioned this the other day...

I've run nntp servers before, admittedly 15 years ago - but a simple
single server "islanded" setup is not hard in itself.

I am not proposing adding to the USENET hierarchy - I'm proposing a
single server. The traffic and number of users is low enough for that to
work.

Pros:

We could moderate and kill OT stuff and obnoxiousness whist whitelisting
anyone who posts reasonable stuff;

Could keep all the leeching web portals off, by force if necessary;

Cons:

I/we have to run a server;

Some people have to be willing to moderate;

Would we need our own properly done web portal to make it popular and
capture new blood?


Opinions please

I ran a major news server about 25 years ago, using INN on Solaris,
when a lot of people were getting their newsfeeds over UUCP.

Usenet has been dying for years, but it's proved remarkably resilient.
Although I recently had to switch to eternal-september because my
ISP's news server stopped handling some UK moderated groups correctly.

One of the advantages of usenet is the distributed nature, which
allows it to continue when individual servers die. If we set up a
central server, how long will that last?