usenet about to die?

[Ben Browning]

FoulDragon at aol.com wrote:
> Standalone Usenet's better cos the CLIENT does all this.  I know, you're all 
> on 30Mbps DSL and can afford to be inefficient, but I'm on a lousy 44k 
> connection.

I used Lynx to read news over a SLIP connection to the local university
when I was in high school in 93. That was actually my introduction to
the internet- i stumbled across when dialed into the UofA's 'sabio'
(spanish for "I know") system, which had an HTML card catalog for its books.

Since then I have used many web-based clients and a great many
clientside ones. Of those, my favorites are Pan on Linux and XNews on
Windows.

> I think you have to make people drool over Usenet, and part of that is making 
> it pretty and appealing, to win over new users until the substance convinces 
> the users.

I have two ways to this. If they *aren't* a web board person in general,
I ask them for a hobby they like and find them a good group or two
relating to that. If they are already a forum junkie, I show them
killfiles and other advanced filtering. I've converted a few people, but
many seem to miss their animated emoticons (bah).

~Ben


-- 
---
"Confession only helps if you actually feel bad for your actions.
For you, it would just be a really long boast."
	-Tara
http://www.emptiedout.com