John Rumm wrote:
On 21/06/2017 18:56, 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.

Getting group stats is not as easy as it once was. But I am guessing we
could be running 10K+ posts a month again.


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;

or have our own leaching web portal ;-)


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 seem to recall discussing something similar a decade ago probably -
maybe not a full on moderated version of the group, but just a sanitised
version that drops the obvious crap. Those who want the full unfiltered
feed can can still access it from their existing usenet server, and will
see posts the the new server back propagated.

The nice thing about usenet is the speed of access - moving from post to
post and thread to thread is near enough instant. The threading model is
vastly better than most web portals. The downside obviously is the
obscurity and the lack of capacity to post images etc.

If we are going to add a web "something" to it, then it needs to bring
something new to the party - not sure what though.




The trouble is most of them are worthless and humourless.