I think the prime movers were economic and operational.
The economics of the web changed. Usenet was a cost center, not a profit center. Once you could monetize your content, many higher quality providers on usenet probably moved to blogs. Even where sites have web forums, the incentives are to catch eyeballs, not facilitate discussion, and they often will seek to control content on their site to maximize those eyeballs.
I used to post some at Sam Harris’ site. One day he pontificated on the self evident desirability of pumping more money into government schools. I was heartened when a number of libertarians lit into his self righteous certainties, and let him know that there were plenty of selves for whom his proposition was self evidently idiotic. Poof; the original blog post and all associated comments disappeared. Such are the wonders of moderation.
Also, with monetization, other high quality competition for eyeballs came online. You and I could pontificate back and forth, or we could listen to (or watch!) the best, brightest, and most educated in the world pontificate.
The operational changes came from a shift from central server university environments to home environments. Universities came with central admins to handle usenet server setups. It also came with the bandwidth to download all hierarchies, making them available to download in pieces by a user, who was likely on a system with TRN already installed.
I started in UNIX environments, but I’ve primarily used windows for at least a decade and a half. I’m sure they must be out there, but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a windows box with a usenet server or TRN installed.
I don’t remember any web site ever implementing a TRN like interface for their forum, but it should be perfectly feasible today. You could even put little ads at the top.
What was that google discussion thing with federated servers? (Google Wave) Wasn’t that even real time? Real time collaboration with wiki like features for collaboration, but trn features as well for discussion, and maybe even filtering. That would be fun. Wish there was something like that out there.
I’m not sure that monetization has a huge amount to do with the story. Usenet was populated by hobby bloggers, and there are still a lot of hobby bloggers—many of them are the same people, but there are plenty of new hobby bloggers showing up all the time.
I’m not convinced that most of the professional bloggers are better than the best hobby bloggers.
It’s plausible that the unowned character of usenet couldn’t be duplicated these days, especially considering that rather few people would settle for an ascii-only medium. On the other hand, Moore’s Law might make a modern usenet feasible.
In any case, as you say, individual sites could have trn, and it could be combined very nicely with an rss feed to give that “page down through your favorite newsgroups” feeling.
I think the prime movers were economic and operational.
The economics of the web changed. Usenet was a cost center, not a profit center. Once you could monetize your content, many higher quality providers on usenet probably moved to blogs. Even where sites have web forums, the incentives are to catch eyeballs, not facilitate discussion, and they often will seek to control content on their site to maximize those eyeballs.
I used to post some at Sam Harris’ site. One day he pontificated on the self evident desirability of pumping more money into government schools. I was heartened when a number of libertarians lit into his self righteous certainties, and let him know that there were plenty of selves for whom his proposition was self evidently idiotic. Poof; the original blog post and all associated comments disappeared. Such are the wonders of moderation.
Also, with monetization, other high quality competition for eyeballs came online. You and I could pontificate back and forth, or we could listen to (or watch!) the best, brightest, and most educated in the world pontificate.
The operational changes came from a shift from central server university environments to home environments. Universities came with central admins to handle usenet server setups. It also came with the bandwidth to download all hierarchies, making them available to download in pieces by a user, who was likely on a system with TRN already installed.
I started in UNIX environments, but I’ve primarily used windows for at least a decade and a half. I’m sure they must be out there, but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a windows box with a usenet server or TRN installed.
I don’t remember any web site ever implementing a TRN like interface for their forum, but it should be perfectly feasible today. You could even put little ads at the top.
What was that google discussion thing with federated servers? (Google Wave) Wasn’t that even real time? Real time collaboration with wiki like features for collaboration, but trn features as well for discussion, and maybe even filtering. That would be fun. Wish there was something like that out there.
I’m not sure that monetization has a huge amount to do with the story. Usenet was populated by hobby bloggers, and there are still a lot of hobby bloggers—many of them are the same people, but there are plenty of new hobby bloggers showing up all the time.
I’m not convinced that most of the professional bloggers are better than the best hobby bloggers.
It’s plausible that the unowned character of usenet couldn’t be duplicated these days, especially considering that rather few people would settle for an ascii-only medium. On the other hand, Moore’s Law might make a modern usenet feasible.
In any case, as you say, individual sites could have trn, and it could be combined very nicely with an rss feed to give that “page down through your favorite newsgroups” feeling.